It's not 'wild dog' management—we are just killing dingoes

NOVEMBER 1, 2019

by University of New South Wales

Dingo or just wild dog? A new study busts the misconception that pure dingoes are extinct in NSW—and finds several 'dingo hotspots' around the state.

Almost all wild dogs in NSW are dingoes or dingo-dominant hybrids, a study from UNSW Sydney and collaborators has found, challenging the widely held view that pure dingoes are virtually extinct in the state.

The study, published this week in Conservation Genetics, tested the genetic makeup of 783 wild canids (animals belonging to the Canidae family, such as dingoes, domestic dogs, foxes and wolves) across north-eastern NSW.

Crucially, the study found nearly one in four animals sampled were likely pure dingoes.

Dingo-dominant hybrids—i.e. animals whose genetic make-up is dominated by dingo genes—accounted for 75 percent of the animals tested, while hybrids with mostly domestic dog genes only made up 2 percent. Surprisingly, less than 1 percent were feral dogs with no dingo ancestry.

The researchers also identified several 'hotspots' in north-eastern NSW where more pure dingoes exist than expected: Port Macquarie, Myall Lakes and the Washpool National Park area.

"Our study shows that for all intents and purposes, wild dogs and dingoes are one and the same," says UNSW Professor Mike Letnic, co-author of the study.

Continued

Dogged researchers show that dingoes keep feral cats in check

APRIL 8, 2019

by Lachlan Gilbert, University of New South Wales

Dingoes play a key role in the conservation of Australian outback ecosystems by suppressing feral cat populations, a UNSW Sydney study has found.

A UNSW Sydney study has ended an argument about whether or not dingoes have an effect on feral cat populations in the outback, finding that the wild dogs do indeed keep the wild cat numbers down.

In a paper published recently in Ecosystems, the researchers compared dingo and feral cat populations either side of the world's longest fence that also doubles as the border between South Australia and New South Wales.

The fence was erected in the 1880s to in an attempt to keep dingoes from attacking sheep flocks in NSW and Queensland.

With a very small number of dingoes on the NSW side of the fence and much larger number on the SA side, the fence offered a perfect opportunity to observe feral cat numbers in identical environments with and without the influence of dingoes.

Professor Mike Letnic from the Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, says that over the course of a six year study – between 2011 and 2017 – he and his fellow researchers compared the numbers of dingoes, cats and their major prey species either side of the dingo fence in the Strzelecki Desert.

"We collected dingo scat and cat scat and analysed them to compare diets, while we also used spotlight searches to record numbers of each as well as two of their common food sources – rabbits and hopping mice," he says.

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Fraser Island dingo attack: boy in hospital after running into pack of wild dogs

Six-year-old in hospital with leg injuries after being bitten by a dingo on a sand dune

Ben Smee

Sat 19 Jan 2019 23.33 GMTLast modified on Sat 19 Jan 2019 23.35 GMT

A six-year-old boy has been attacked after unexpectedly running into a pack of dingoes on world heritage-listed Fraser Island, where the wild dog population is a protected species.

The child was bitten on the leg on Saturday afternoon after running up a sand dune.

The boy had been swimming with his family, and ran up the dune, Royal Automobile Club of Queensland Lifeflight rescue helicopter crewman Dan Leggat said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, when he got to the top, there was a pack of four dingoes,” Leggat said.

“One of the dingoes attacked the boy and bit him on the leg,”

The boy was treated by paramedics on the island and airlifted to the mainland at Hervey Bay.

Fraser Island, off Australia’s Queensland coast, is home to Australia’s most significant purebred dingo colony. About 200 dingoes inhabit the sand island, where they remain the apex predator and have been isolated from crossbreeding with feral and domestic dogs.

Tourists are warned to take precautions outside of fenced areas, including walking in groups, keeping children within arm’s length and not running as it attracts dingoes.

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Genetic study uncovers evolutionary history of dingoes

October 31, 2017 by Deborah Smith

A major study of dingo DNA has revealed dingoes most likely migrated to Australia in two separate waves via a former land bridge with Papua New Guinea.

The find has significant implications for conservation, with researchers recommending the two genetically distinct populations of dingoes – in the south-east and north-west of the country – be treated as different groups for management and conservation purposes.

"Care should be taken not to move dingoes between the different wild populations," says study first author and UNSW Sydney scientist Dr Kylie Cairns. "And captive breeding programs should ensure the two dingo populations are maintained separately, with genetic testing used to identify ancestry."

Dr Cairns says there is also an urgent need to prevent further inter-breeding between domestic dogs and the south-eastern population of dingoes, which is threatened by genetic dilution, habitat loss and lethal control measures such as baiting and the recently reintroduced wild dog bounty in Victoria.

"Effective containment or neutering of male dogs in rural areas may help achieve this reduction in inter-breeding," says Dr Cairns, of the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

"Additionally, baiting and culling practices break apart dingo packs, leading to increased incidences of hybridisation. Alternative livestock protection measures need to be explored, such as livestock guardians, predator deterrents and improved dingo-proof fencing," she says.

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Historical coexistence with dingoes may explain bandicoot avoidance of domestic dogs

Bandicoots avoid domestic dogs in areas with 4,000 years of dingo coexistence; do not avoid dogs where there are no dingoes

Date: September 7, 2016

Source: PLOS

Domestic dogs and cats were introduced to Tasmania two centuries ago, but bandicoots still fail to recognize these introduced predators as threats, according a study published September 7, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Anke Frank from University of Tasmania, Australia, and colleagues.

Worldwide, introduced predators have caused declines and extinctions of native wildlife, presumably in part because native species do not see novel predators as threats and thus fail to flee or defend themselves. But this naiveté is not necessarily forever: bandicoots in Sydney avoid backyards with domestic dogs. Interestingly, however, Sydney bandicoots do not avoid domestic cats even though they, like domestic dogs, were introduced about 200 years ago. This varying behavior to introduced predators has been attributed to the fact that dingoes arrived in mainland Australia 4000 years ago, predisposing Sydney bandicoots to avoid domestic dogs.

To test this hypothesis, Frank and colleagues assessed bandicoot behavior in Tasmania, where domestic dogs have been present for 200 years but where dingoes have never been present. The researchers surveyed 548 people in Hobart, Tasmania -- 37% of whom owned at least one dog and 20% of whom owned at least one cat -- about bandicoot sightings and scats in their backyards.

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Queensland shuts down 'inhumane' goat cull using poisoned dingoes

Environment minister orders all dingoes to be removed from Pelorus Island, where they had been introduced to kill goats

Australian Associated Press

Thursday 18 August 201604.02 BST

An “inhumane” program that used surgically sterilised dingoes as a form of pest control for goats on a far north Queensland island has been shut down by the state government.

The Hinchinbrook shire council had decided to release dogs implanted with time-delayed poison pellets on Pelorus Island, north of Townsville, to kill baby goats as a form of pest control.

The plan was slammed by the RSPCA and community groups as “outright” animal cruelty.

The Queensland environment minister, Steven Miles, on Thursday issued conservation orders to shut down the program and remove all dingoes from the island within 14 days.

Miles said that in the 1990s a similar plan saw dingoes released on Townshend Island but it later caused problems for native birds.

“Pelorus Island currently has no significant predators to the birds on the island,” he said.

Bird species on the island included a threatened species of ground-dwelling shorebird, the beach stone curlew.

The minister also said while some Liberal National party members had contacted him concerned about the “horrendous” plan, the Hinchinbrook MP, Andrew Cripps, declared his support.

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'Rewilding' dingoes could help reverse decline of Australia's native wildlife

Scientists say altering dingo-proof fencing to allow the predators into a NSW national park to prey upon pests could help restore balance to the ecosystem

Oliver Milman

@olliemilman

Tuesday 17 February 2015 03.02 GMTLast modified on Tuesday 17 February 201503.14 GMT

Australia’s lengthy “dingo fence” should be altered to allow dingoes into a national park to test whether they can help reverse the precipitous decline of native wildlife, a group of conservation experts has recommended.

The bold experiment would involve remodelling the dingo-proof fence that stretches from eastern Queensland to the South Australian coastline. At more than 5,500km long, the barrier, originally constructed in the 1880s to keep out rabbits, is the longest fence in the world.

Altering the fence’s boundary would enable dingoes to enter the Sturt national park in New South Wales, allowing scientists to assess whether dingoes, long reviled by many people as dangerous to livestock and even humans, could in fact act as saviours for threatened native animals.

Dingoes are known to prey upon kangaroos, emus and feral goats and it’s thought they also deter foxes and feral cats – the two introduced predators blamed for causing massive declines in animals such as bilbies, bandicoots and bettongs across Australia.

Continued ...

Secret of Dingo's Down-Under Origin Revealed

Indians migrating to Australia more than 4,000 years ago may have introduced dingoes to the island continent, along with novel stone tools and new ways to remove toxins from edible plants, researchers say.

Australia was thought to have remained largely isolated from the rest of the world between its initial colonization about 40,000 years ago by the ancestors of aboriginal Australians and the arrival of Europeans in the late 1800s.

"Outside Africa, aboriginal Australians are the oldest continuous population in the world," said researcher Irina Pugach, a molecular anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/26246-dingoes-indian-migrants-australia.html

Dingo repopulation could control feral animals

Scientists say governments need to seriously consider reintroducing dingoes to the landscape in order to protect vulnerable native species.

Dingoes cause hundreds of thousands of dollars damage each year to livestock and there have been huge efforts to cull them by laying poisonous baits and shooting them.
But this has allowed feral species like cats and foxes to thrive and experts say the current approach is counter-productive.
About 40 per cent of the country's native species are listed as threatened or close to extinction, thanks to the explosion in numbers of feral cats and foxes.
Dr Tony Friend, the president of the Australian Mammal Society, says trying to control these animals is a losing battle.

"We are getting reasonably good at controlling foxes in the local areas but cats are a huge problem, partly exacerbated by removing foxes, so once the foxes are taken out, cats do well and basically step into the feet of the foxes," he said.
Research is being conducted Australia-wide to see if bringing back dingoes will help control these pests.

One recent study in South Australia's north recorded a reduction in feral cat and fox numbers with the introduction of dingoes.

Continued:  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-28/dingo-repopulation-could-control-feral-animals/4286500?section=tas