Dingoes and Farmers- the love hate relationship.

                                                       Photo from: www.thetimes.co.uk

A very fascinating topic that I love to discuss are the importance of Dingoes. It is believed that the Dingo was brought to Australia around 5,000 to 15,000 years ago. Unfortunately, the debate wages on about Dingo culling and whether or not it is controlled or humane. If you ask wildlife experts or conservationists what resulted to the decline of Australia's apex predator, they will often say persecution and hybridisation. But although this persecution is understandable from a livelihood standpoint the decline of the dingo population results in the direct increase in macropods i.e., Kangaroos, Wallabies, Pademelons and many other species. Also, the increase of introduced feral species such as Deer and Rabbits that are vegetarians much like cattle that outcompete them for food among the grazing fields. Deer are spread through all of the states and territories of Australia with an estimation of 200,000 in population size and the number is rising while wild rabbits are estimated to be at least 150 million in Australia with Kangaroos being at an estimation of 48 million with growing numbers, while the estimated number of wild Dingoes left in Australia are between 10,000 to 50,000. Often in areas where you'll find less activity of wild Dingoes you will have increased population of wild vegetarian animals that can lead to the starvation of cattle and forage the crops of vegetable farmers.

NSW- Dingoes and wild dogs can be culled even poisoned under the NSW Biodiversity Act 2015.

Nationwide there are very loose laws on culling Dingoes but as their numbers drop the increase numbers of wild native and non-native animals increase significantly. This results in the suffering of cattle due to loss of crops in which already have suffered due to droughts. There is no real solution unfortunately because one extreme does not fix another extreme and can only make things worse effecting the balance of biodiversity in regions of mass culling.


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