7.30 / By Ella Archibald-Binge
Voracious predator of livestock or precious wildlife? That is the plight of the dingo.
Warning: This story contains images of dead animals that some people may find distressing
A more casual observer may only hear about them after an altercation with a tourist.
But the debate over their management is a quintessentially Australian one: How to conserve our ecosystem and rich culture while enabling modern industries to thrive.
Joshua Henry has a unique perspective.
The traditional owner has always known dingoes were culturally important.
As a fourth-generation grazier he was also raised to see them as a threat to cattle.
“I’m not going to lie – we used to bait heavily to kill the dingoes,” he tells 7.30.
But in recent years his views have changed, following conversations with family, other Indigenous communities and dingo experts.
“We have to protect them,” he says.
“I never, ever thought I’d say that, but it’s something we have to do as Indigenous people.”
Dingoes are routinely killed through trapping, shooting and poison baiting programs across mainland Australia to protect livestock.
The National Wild Dog Action Plan, a blueprint for how to manage the impacts of dingoes on livestock, says attacks cost the Australian economy $89 million a year in lost production and control costs – and cause emotional distress to farmers.
The plan’s managing coordinator, Greg Mifsud, says it is about finding a balance between protecting dingoes in some areas and controlling them in others.
“We’re not trying to eradicate dingoes or wild dogs from the planet or from the continent – we’re just trying to manage their numbers and populations so that there’s less that cause problems,” he says.
There is no comprehensive data showing how many dingoes remain in the wild, or how many are killed through lethal control each year.
Dingo advocates, dozens of scientists and traditional owners have long called for the nation to rethink its management of the apex predator, which plays a vital ecological role at the top of the food chain.
Last year, 20 First Nations groups signed a declaration calling for an end to lethal control, adding a new dimension to the campaign.
“The dingo is deeply sacred to Australia’s First Nations peoples. They are family,” it reads.
“We do not, and have never, approved the killing of dingoes … we demand an immediate stop to this practice across Australia.”
Sonya Takau, chief director of the Dingo Advisory Council, a national coalition of dingo experts recently set up to help farmers find other ways to protect their livestock, was a driving force behind the declaration.
“We have never been included in the decision-making processes with dingo management in this country, and that is why I want to be sitting at the table,” she says.
For Joshua Henry, the declaration was the catalyst to stop killing dingoes on his property.
He helps manage Badjuballa Station, 59,000 hectares of grazing land in rainforest country a treacherous four-hour drive south-west of Cairns.
The property was returned to traditional owners in 2000 and is now managed by the Badjuballa Aboriginal Corporation.
Overlooking the property is Dingo Mountain – a testament to the animal’s longstanding ties to local tribes.
Girramay man Christopher Kennedy, chairman of the corporation, says dingoes were valued companions to his ancestors.
“They were more of a protection to us, and they really safeguarded us out here on country,” he says.
“When you go around Australia and you look at every other Aboriginal community, they always had dingoes with them – they co-existed.”
Mr Kennedy remembers a kangaroo hunting trip from his youth, when his cousin saw a dingo and shot it.
The animal limped away, yelping.
Another member of the hunting party fired a second, fatal shot.
That night Mr Kennedy couldn’t sleep: “I was so upset within my spirit – I was unsettled,” he says.
He told his mother about his unease.
“And she said, ‘I told you – that thing, he’s family to us,'” he recalls.
Mr Kennedy says he now feels culturally obligated to protect an animal that “has no voice”.
“I think it’s important, because it’s bringing back the way of life – how it used to be before colonisation,” he says.
Mr Mifsud says he welcomes input from Indigenous communities and has worked with several groups to avoid lethal control in areas where dingoes have cultural significance.
But he says a blanket ban is unrealistic.
“I don’t think it’s feasible … given the population dynamics of the animals we’re now talking about,” he says.
Landholders in Queensland have a legal responsibility to control dingoes on their property.
Badjuballa Station runs around 300 cattle but the bulk of its income is generated through agistors.
Its owners are now looking at other options, such as training animals like donkeys, Maremma dogs or alpacas to guard the cattle.
Joshua Henry acknowledges the station’s new approach might “upset the apple cart” with agistors and neighbouring properties, but he is determined to stick to it.
“It’s something we’ve got to do for ourselves as Indigenous people,” he says.
“Hopefully it’ll work for us.”
Greg Mifsud says non-lethal measures are imperfect, particularly for larger properties with complex boundaries.
“Non-lethal control tools are very specific and work really well in some situations, but have limited capacity in others,” he says.
Much of the country remains deeply divided over whether dingoes are native wildlife to be protected or an invasive pest to be controlled.
At the heart of the debate is a dispute over whether the animals in question are, in fact, dingoes – or dingo-dog hybrids.
It was widely believed that dingoes and domestic dogs started breeding after colonisation, creating hybrids later called wild dogs and classed as invasive pests.
Several states have different laws for dingoes and wild dogs.
Dingoes may be protected on public land but wild dogs are not.
Last year a landmark study up-ended long-held assumptions that underpin those laws.
UNSW conservation geneticist Kylie Cairns used cutting edge methods to test the DNA of 307 wild animals from across Australia.
The study was partly funded by The Dingo Foundation.
Nationally, 85 per cent were pure dingoes with little, or no, dog ancestry.
In Victoria, 90 per cent of animals had no dog ancestry at all.
“The genetic evidence suggests that largely dingoes and dogs don’t reproduce together,” Dr Cairns says.
“It’s really brought to the forefront the fact that the animal we’re killing with lethal control is a native animal … and we should be managing them as a native animal instead of as an invasive animal.”
7.30 can reveal the Australian Capital Territory is working on a new plan to manage dingoes as a native species after a follow-up study of 20 animals from Namadgi National Park showed all were 100 per cent pure dingoes.
The revised plan will still allow lethal control in some areas.
The Victorian government is also reviewing its wild dog management policies, with a decision due in October.
And in March it went a step further, becoming the first state to ban the killing of dingoes on public and private land in the Big Desert region, after data showed a local pack was on the brink of extinction.
Data from the Arthur Rylah Institute showed there were as few as 40 dingoes left in the park, on the border of Victoria and South Australia.
Genetic testing shows they are pure dingoes with dangerous levels of inbreeding.
While the move to protect them was celebrated by dingo advocates, the reception in rural Victoria has been very different.
Alan Bennett’s sheep farm borders the Big Desert.
Just before the law change, his daughter found five dead sheep in a paddock.
Further inspection revealed several sheep with fatal injuries.
“They just basically get eaten alive,” Mr Bennett says.
“The wild dogs are what do it … we see their tracks coming out of the park.”
The farmer applied for a permit to kill the predator, as required under the new law.
The state environment department declined the application on the grounds that killing even one dingo could threaten the population’s survival.
The attacks have continued.
7.30 has seen images of 13 dead sheep, including one lamb.
Mr Bennett estimates the total loss is closer to 50 sheep in the space of three months.
“Farming is all about finding solutions,” he says.
“And yet, I reckon this one with the wild dogs is probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to try and deal with in my farming career.”
The Victorian government has allocated $550,000 to farmers in the region to help them transition to non-lethal control methods such as guardian animals and taller, stronger fencing.
But Mr Bennett says it would cost almost that much just to fence his property alone.
“If the state government wants to protect the wild dogs in the Big Desert, that’s fine by me too,” he says.
“But we shouldn’t be asked to bear the full cost of that decision, unassisted.
“The state government hasn’t moved the goalposts – they’ve ripped them off the oval.”
Ms Takau says she empathises with farmers in the Big Desert.
“Let’s get behind them, support them and the government fund them to trial these non-lethal alternatives,” she says.
“If this works, then it means it’ll roll out across Australia. It has to.”
Read the original article on the ABC website here