Wild Dogs

Wild dogs are widely distributed throughout Australia.

Dead sheep, mauled wildlife, chilling howls in the day and night. That is the reality of living in wild dog country.
Imagine working your entire life to breed world class sheep only to see them torn apart by savage wild feral dogs that kill for fun, not food. That is the world of many farmers living and working in what they thought was a natural paradise in Australia.

They see wild dogs' destruction daily, and its impact on both farmers and native wild life that is eaten by feral dogs the dog trappers say are increasingly cross-bred & larger by the year. Many farmers are emotionally and financially crippled, want to sell up, or have little livestock left to make a living from.

Many feel like prisoners on their farms as they shepherd sheep the ancient way, in order to keep livestock alive.

At the same time, in unoccupied lands and areas of extensive cattle grazing, wild dogs are often tolerated, resulting in the local native animals being wiped out.

Dingoes were introduced to Australia around 4,000 years ago, gradually replacing the Thylacine as Australia's largest land predator. Domestic dogs-run-wild are dogs that have escaped, been abandoned or deliberately released over the last 200 years and have survived or bred in the wild.

On average adult wild dogs weigh between 15 and 25 kilograms. There is great variation in coat colour from sandy yellow to black, white and brindle.

They make homes in hollow logs, caves or wombat burrows. Wild dogs can hunt successfully alone or in packs depending on the type of prey. An average territory would be about 100 square kilometres depending on the available resources.
What makes things worse, is when wild dogs are removed from an area, others will gradually replace them.

The Wild Dog Barrier Fence (previously called the Dingo Barrier Fence) was first proposed in the late 1940s to protect sheep from being attacked by wild dogs. Erection, however, was not completed until the late 1950s.


Originally the graziers were responsible for maintaining the fence, but with drought and changes in the wool market it didn’t take long for the fence to fall into disrepair.

In 1982, a $3.6 million state government program commenced to rebuild almost half of the original barrier fence (2500 km of the original 5600 km). The program also realigned a large section of the fence to exclude previously protected areas in central-western and north-western Queensland. This meant the barrier fence would only provide protection from wild dogs in central-southern Queensland. The current Wild Dog Barrier Fence is the result of that program.

Today, the Wild Dog Barrier Fence is administered by the Department of Natural Resources and Mines. It is about 2500 km long and protects 26.5 million hectares of sheep and cattle grazing country.

Never approach a wild dog or call one to come to you and never tempt them with food. If you observe a wild dog, remain in a group and watch quietly from a distance. Do not touch scats as they may carry disease.

DOWLOAD FACT SHEET

http://www.feral.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/WildDog.pdf

Dingo

The Australian Dingo or Warrigal is an ancient, free roaming, primitive canine unique to the continent of Australia, specifically the outback. Its original ancestors are thought to have arrived with humans from southeast Asia thousands of years ago, when dogs were still relatively undomesticated and closer to their wild Asian Gray Wolf parent species, Canis lupus.

The fur of adult dingoes is short, bushy on the tail, and varies in thickness and length depending on the climate. The fur colour is mostly sandy to reddish brown, but can include tan patterns and be occasionally black, light brown, or white.

It is often wrongly asserted that dingoes do not bark. Compared to most other domestic dogs, the bark of a dingo is short and mono sounding.

80% of the diet of dingoes consist of 10 species, the Red Kangaroo, Swamp Wallaby, cattle, Dusky Rat, Magpie Goose, Common Brushtail Possum, Long-haired Rat, Agile Wallaby, European rabbit and the Common Wombat.
Today dingoes live in all kinds of habitats, including the snow-covered mountain forests of Eastern Australia, dry hot deserts of Central Australia, and Northern Australia's tropical forest wetlands.

Dingo Fence


The Dingo Fence or Dog Fence is a pest-exclusion fence that was built in Australia during the 1880s and finished in 1885, to keep dingoes out of the relatively fertile south-east part of the continent (where they had largely been exterminated) and protect the sheep flocks of southern Queensland. It is one of the longest structures in the world and is the world's longest fence.

It stretches 5,614 km (3,488 mi) from Jimbour on the Darling Downs near Dalby through thousands of kilometres of arid land ending west of Eyre peninsula on cliffs of the Nullarbor Plain above the Great Australian Bight(131° 40’ E),near Nundroo. It has been partly successful, though dingoes can still be found in parts of the southern states.

Although the fence has helped reduce losses of sheep to predators, this has been countered by holes in fences found in the 1990s to which dingo offspring have passed through and due to increased pasture competition from rabbits and kangaroos.

Today, the rate at which feral camel are smashing down sections of the fence is fast increasing in Southern Australia. Plans for restructuring the Dog fence to be taller and electric are under process.

Dingoes and Aboriginal culture


Traditionally dogs have a privileged position in the aboriginal cultures of Australia (which the dingo may have adopted from the thylacine) and the dingo is a well known part of rock carvings and cave paintings. There are ceremonies (like a keen at the Cape York Peninsula in the form of howling) and dreamtime stories connected to the dingo, which were passed down through the generations. There are strong feelings that dingoes should not be killed and in some areas women are breast feeding young cubs.