Em Nau Farm BLOG

Dingoes and Wild Dogs

Well didn’t I stir up a hornets’ nest last week when I posted the picture of the dingo on the website’s “Picture of the Week” page.

NOTE:  At various points I am going to class dingoes and feral (wild) dogs as different in this blog.  As dingoes have been around for 4000 years and wild dogs have only been introduced in the past 226 years they need to be considered (in my opinion) differently in some respects.

It seems that dingoes (and to a much less extent wild dogs) polarise people through conflicting and sometimes extreme views.  I found this out when telling people about the dingo that was trapped and killed on the neighbour’s property.  (side note there was a second one trapped and killed over the past weekend in the same spot).  Some people were interested in the how and why of it all but others were more damning in condemning the killing of a native animal

The two points of view can be demonstrated by on one hand the farmer who has his live stock decimated by wild dogs and dingoes who kill animals in competition for food and water and on the other hand by conservationists (for the want of a better word) who see dingoes in particular as Australia’s largest (besides humans) land predator who help keep introduced animals like the fox and feral cat in check.

Now I understand that there is a need to have a top order predator roaming around to keep fox and feral cat populations down as those introduced animals also kill livestock as well as the native fauna but we have had a few chooks go missing to wild dogs in the past and I am not prepared to go out one morning to find a lamb, kid or calf with their insides ripped out, still alive and suffering all because some wild dog pack roamed to close to the farm. 

In Queensland (not sure about other parts of Australia) the law states that, landowners, including state and local government, are responsible for controlling declared pest animals on their property (pest animals include mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects and birds – that threaten Queensland's primary industries, natural ecosystems, and human and animal health).  The wild dog is a Class 2 declared animal under Queensland legislation.

Around our way we have a few methods available to dispatch the wild dogs and dingoes. The methods could include:

• chemical control - using pesticides and insecticides to control pest animals

• physical control - using mechanical tools, equipment and machinery to capture, exclude or destroy pest animals

• biological control - using animal-specific diseases to control pest animal populations or protecting livestock with guardian animals

The locals up here use poisons legally available for wild dog control (1080 (sodium monofluoroacetate) or strychnine) or they could trap/shot the pest.  There are also a few who use guardian animals such as dogs, donkeys or alpacas.

I suppose in essence I am all for knocking off any feral dogs and a little less so the dingo but when you are trying to protect your livestock it is hard to discriminate between the two.

Below are some photos of the dingo that was caught last week.