Will the Dingo join the Thylacine?

The last Tasmanian tiger died a lonely death in the Hobart Zoo in 1936, just 59 days after new state laws aimed at protecting it from extinction were passed in parliament.

But the warning bells about its likely demise had been pealing for several decades before that protection came too late - and today we’re making many of the same deadly mistakes, only now it’s with dingoes.

Read more at The Conversation.

Dingoes on the way out...

Dingoes are currently listed as a threatened species but if more isn't done they could disappear from parts of Australia, wildlife experts say.

Healesville sanctuary senior dingo keeper Sue Jaensch said Tuesday's coronial ruling that a dingo was responsible for the death of Azaria Chamberlain in 1980 provided an opportunity to highlight the difficulties dingoes face in the wild.

'Most of our visitors aren't aware dingoes are classified as a threatened species here in Victoria,' Ms Jaensch told AAP.

It was only in 2008 that the Victorian government recognised the dingo as a threatened species.

Before that they were recognised as a pest, Ms Jaensch said.

'Historically dingoes have been managed as pests.'

Ms Jaensch's concerns echo an article published in Australian Wildlife Secrets in May that warned if immediate action wasn't taken to protect the dingo it may go the way of the Tasmanian Tiger and become extinct.

'In recent times (dingo) numbers have declined over large areas of its former range,' the report said.

When asked if the threat of extinction was real, Ms Jaensch said: 'Definitely in parts of Australia.'

'The biggest threat to them in the wild is the interbreeding with feral dogs,' Ms Jaensch said.

'Sadly we have a growing population of wild dogs in Australia.'

Dingoes are notoriously secretive and therefore difficult to study but myths surrounding the shy canid have put its future in jeopardy.

Ms Jaensch also said their reputation as an introduced species and predator contributed to their treatment in the past.

However, as a top order predator, she likened their role to that of a lion in Africa or a tiger in Asia.

'Dingoes are a very important part to the native environment,' Ms Jaensch said.

'Recent studies have shown in areas where dingoes are found they help to control numbers of foxes and feral cats and rabbits which is great for famers because that means they've got more grass.'

http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=760398&vId=

Dingoes and Devils the answer for Australia?

A new paper to be published in the May edition of Trends in Ecology and Evolution suggests dingoes and Tasmanian devils could control invasive species, such as cats and foxes, as well as overabundant herbivores.

"We need to be quite bold and allow predators back into the landscape and see if they can reverse some of the damage we've done," said Dr Euan Ritchie, ecologist at Deakin University in Melbourne and lead author of the paper.


The abstract of the paper reads:

"Recent advances highlight the potential for predators to restore ecosystems and confer resilience against globally threatening processes, including climate change and biological invasions. However, releasing the ecological benefits of predators entails significant challenges. Here, we discuss the economic, environmental and social considerations affecting predator-driven ecological restoration programmes, and suggest approaches for reducing the undesirable impacts of predators. Because the roles of predators are context dependent, we argue for increased emphasis on predator functionality in ecosystems and less on the identities and origins of species and genotypes. We emphasise that insufficient attention is currently given to the importance of variation in the social structures and behaviours of predators in influencing the dynamics of trophic interactions. Lastly, we outline experiments specifically designed to clarify the ecological roles of predators and their potential utility in ecosystem restoration."

Read more here.

Did dingoes play a role in Thylacine extinction?

A new academic paper is out...

Impact of the dingo on the thylacine (Tasmanian Tigers)

Fillios, Melanie, Mathew S. Crowther, and Mike Letnic. 2012. “The Impact of the Dingo on the Thylacine in Holocene Australia.” World Archaeology 44 (1): 118–134.

"The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) was one of Australia’s largest predators, but became extinct in mainland Australia soon after the arrival of a new predator, the dingo (Canis lupus dingo) around 3500 bp. Evidence implicating the dingo in the thylacine’s extinction has been equivocal, largely because thylacines are thought to be considerably larger than dingoes. Thus, other concurrent factors, such as shifts in human technology and population increase as well as climate change, have been cited to explain their extinction. Here we present new morphological evidence that female mainland Holocene thylacines were actually smaller than dingoes. We discuss these findings against archaeological and contemporary ecological evidence concerning dingoes’ environmental impacts, and provide evidence that, as novel predators, dingoes induced a trophic cascade that had dramatic impacts on the fauna and economy of Holocene Australia. We suggest that dingoes, owing to their larger brains and body size, were likely a primary agent for the extinction of the thylacine from mainland Australia."

Read more here.

Ayers Rock (Uluru) dingoes under the microscope

One of Australia's most infamous deaths - the disappearance of baby Azaria Chamberlain at Ayers Rock (now known as Uluru) - saw an innocent woman sent to jail before the real culprit, a dingo, was put firmly in the frame.

Now the events of 1980 are once again being revisited in a new inquest, to be held in February 2012.

The inquest will be the fourth into the infant's death, which drew international attention after her mother, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, was convicted of murder in 1982 and sentenced to life imprisonment. She was later freed and the conviction quashed.

Azaria's parents have always maintained she was taken from their tent by a dingo. The case has gripped the public imagination for decades, prompting several dramatisations, including a 1988 movie starring Meryl Streep.

Wild dog numbers explode in Qld

Queensland's summer of drenching rains has led to an explosion in the state's wild dog population.

The big wet prevented regular canine culling efforts, leaving livestock and the land's biodiversity vulnerable.

Agriculture Minister Tim Mulherin on Wednesday released the Wild Dog Management Strategy, aimed at controlling wild dogs, including dingoes, dingo-hybrids and domestic dogs turned feral.

Is the bell tolling for dingoes?

This week the UK's Independent newspaper wades into the dingo debate...

Ten years ago, and nearly two decades after the infamous Lindy Chamberlain case, a boy of nine was killed by two dingoes on an island in Queensland – grim proof that Australia's native dogs do attack children. The fatal mauling of Clinton Gage, at the popular tourist destination of Fraser Island, caused national outrage and silenced those who had scorned Ms Chamberlain's claim that a dingo had snatched her baby daughter, Azaria, as they camped out at Uluru in 1980. The Queensland government took drastic steps to protect visitors, culling dozens of animals on Fraser and fencing off resorts and camping grounds.

Now critics say the clampdown has gone too far and that Fraser Island's dingoes, accustomed to scavenging in rubbish tips, are dying of starvation. Some conservationists are even warning that the animals could go the way of the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, which was hunted into oblivion in the 1930s after being blamed for livestock deaths.

Dingo Secrets of the Blue Mountains

Somehow, just a few kilometres from the crowded streets of Sydney, a secret society of dingoes has managed to remain hidden. But what’s now being revealed about their culture and intelligence is amazing. And considering the prevailing attitude to dingoes, it’s a miracle there are any left.

The ABC's Catalyst program recorded this program in 2009.

A subspecies of the wolf, the dingo was introduced by humans to Australia around 5000 years ago, resulting in the extinction of the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) and Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) in mainland Australia. 

The dingo is now the native top-order predatory mammal. Dingoes are omnivorous, though they primarily eat medium to large mammals such as wallabies and kangaroos. They regulate kangaroo numbers in South Australia and probably elsewhere, and help to control feral species such as cats,
pigs, goats and foxes. They live in most environments, from densely forested to cleared areas.

The dingo is listed on the IUCN red list of threatened species as vulnerable due to a 30% decrease in numbers (see IUCN 2005).

In NSW, dingo populations from Sturt NP, the coastal ranges and some coastal parks have been nominated as endangered populations under the TSC Act.

In contrast, the dingo is unprotected under the NPW Act, despite being considered a native species – a discrepancy that is yet to be resolved.

Dingoes are also a declared pest species under the Rural Lands Protection Act 1998.

Qld prizes tourism over wildlife

Further to last night's excellent Australian Story piece on dingo campaigner Jennifer Parkhurst is this video that outlines the sensationalist reporting of dingoes on Fraser Island.

Jennifer Parkhurst on Australian Story tonight

Why did a passion for dingo welfare drive one woman to break the law?

Featuring remarkable footage of the world's last pure pack of wild dogs on Fraser Island make this a must-see edition.

Tonight on Australian television, don't miss Australian Story, 'Hounded', screens Monday, February 28, 8.00pm on ABC1.

Buy Jennifer Parkhurst's new Fraser Island dingo book!

Show your support for the amazing wildlife photographer Jennifer Parkhurst - and raise awareness about the future of Fraser Island's much maligned purebred dingoes. Every self-respecting naturalist and library should grab a copy.

 

Click on the order form to make it bigger. You will need to write out your orders and send them to:

The Secretary @ Save Fraser Island Dingoes - mkrail@bigpond.net.au

 

or

Nicky at Oryx Publishing - oryxpublishing@bigpond.com

Australia's nasty secret - the species we torture

For decades tourists have swamped the picturesque shores of Fraser Island, a holiday mecca and World Heritage-listed site of exceptional beauty and home to a range of native species.
But what they see today when they visit might shock them - starving pure-bred dingoes, the victims of a bizarre approach by the Queensland Government to discourage human-animal interaction on the island following the death of a young child who was mauled by dingoes 10 years ago.

Wildlife photographer Jennifer Parkhurst paid the price for trying to help the dingoes - a species Australia can't seem to make up its mind about. On the one hand its lauded as a cultural icon and remembered as a companion of the first Australians who set foot on the continent, on the other derided as a pest and threat. But is that any excuse to torture a species?

Sydney Morning Herald journalist Frank Robson caught up with Jennifer Parkhurst recently, and what she has to say about the plight of the dingoes is heartbreaking.

Battle over the fate of Fraser Island's dingoes

January 8, 2011

Wildlife photographer Jennifer Parkhurst fell foul of the law trying to protect the island's harried inhabitants, writes Frank Robson.

Jennifer Parkhurst's war with the custodians of Fraser Island's dingoes began when she saw rangers setting traps for the harried animals atop a sand dune. It was 2003, two years after a nine-year-old boy had died in a dingo attack, and the traps were part of the Queensland government's radical crackdown on human-dingo interaction within the world-renowned national park.

Parkhurst, a wildlife photographer, approached the rangers and asked to see the traps. They were the usual cruel-looking devices, but the rangers assured her that a covering of rubber on the jaws meant the dingoes would not be hurt. Once trapped, they would be ear-tagged for identification and then released.

"So I said, 'OK, if they don't hurt, let's pop your arm in one and trigger it,'" Parkhurst says. "But they didn't go for that idea. After that, relations between me and DERM [Queensland's Department of Environment and Resource Management] got steadily worse."

Over ensuing years, rangers killed scores of "problem" dingoes and fenced off the island's residential communities and campsites to isolate the animals from humans. Signs were erected and brochures depicting dingoes as fearsome, toothy killers liable to attack at any moment were distributed, with a warning that anyone feeding them would be ordered off the island and fined up to $3000.

Cut off from their human food sources - rubbish tips, camp bins and the island residents who had fed them scraps for decades - and with their natural habitat under siege by up to 350,000 tourists a year, Fraser's native dogs, one of the purest dingo strains left in Australia, became desperate victims of Queensland's bizarre tourism-native species juggling act.

Snapshots by island residents show emaciated dingoes standing plaintively outside the communities' electrified cattle grids or dragging legs injured by the department's "harmless" traps or being "hazed" (shot at by rangers with slingshots and pellets) away from carloads of excitable backpackers. In some cases, autopsies of those killed by rangers revealed nothing in their stomachs but sand or plastic waste or grass.

"To see these beautiful animals in that condition broke my heart," Parkhurst says. "The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service [a department agency] estimates there are more than 200 dingoes on the island, but even allowing for seasonal breeding variations I think there are a lot less than that."

For years, Parkhurst, 43, travelled daily from her home at Rainbow Beach to photograph one of the island's 10 dingo packs at Hook Point, on Fraser's southern tip.

Increasingly at odds with the rangers, who suspected her of illegally feeding the pack, she was woken early on August 25, 2009, by five department officials and a policeman, who had a warrant to search her home.

Six hours later, they left, taking all her computer files about dingoes, including a book she was writing, 90 department dingo autopsy reports she had obtained through freedom-of-information searches, and her spirited analysis of the department's dingo management stuff-ups. They took her still and video footage of dingoes, her journals, field notes and even photos of "K9", her pet dog of 16 years which died not long before the raid. (Most of the material has yet to be returned.)

On November 3 last year, Parkhurst appeared in Maryborough Magistrates Court and pleaded guilty to 46 charges related to feeding and "disturbing" dingoes in the Great Sandy National Park (Fraser Island) between July 2008 and August 2009.

Pleading not guilty wasn't an option: among the videos seized was footage of her feeding members of the Hook Point dingo pack and celebrating Christmas Day 2008, with the pack and her now former boyfriend. Parkhurst is heard to say: "Three roast chickens … disappeared in seconds, but gee whiz, they loved it."

(The videos seized also contained footage shot by Parkhurst of a veteran ranger, Les Gallehawk, feeding dingoes a bucket of fish at the same location. Gallehawk was sacked and fined $300 for his action last year. "I'm not allowed to say anything about it," he said from his home. "I had to sign an agreement after I got sacked.")

She was fined $40,000 and received a nine-month jail term, suspended for three years. The magistrate, John Smith, referred to the "deliberate nature" of Parkhurst's offending, saying she had engaged in a covert campaign over a long period and had sought to hide her offending from rangers.

At her home, Parkhurst told the Herald she had been made a scapegoat for the department's flawed management of Fraser Island. She believes the harshness of her sentence was linked to her role as an activist against the government's treatment of island dingoes. "I have to take responsibility for what I did," she adds, "but I don't accept that feeding starving animals makes them dangerous. I believe if everyone was feeding them - as residents and rangers used to - they would be less of a risk to visitors, not more."

Before her court appearance, rangers killed five of the juvenile dingoes Parkhurst had fed and given names to, claiming they had become habituated and had "attacked" humans. "My actions put the spotlight on that pack, and that's what got them killed. That's what I'm remorseful about … yet I hope people can understand how horrific it was watching those animals starving. It's such a slow, cruel, horrible process."