At the end of this month the Victorian Government will decide whether to maintain the unprotected status of dingos or not.

At present, the management program of professional trappers working within the three-kilometre buffer zone bordering native forests works well in cooperation with landholders.

Critically, it has reduced the number of cruel deaths of sheep (and young cattle) and of course the financial and emotional cost to farmers.

David (Starchy) Laurence’s story, which appeared in last week’s Country News, is but just one, and if Starchy’s back-of-the-envelope calculations are as much as a couple of thousand off, that figure is still in the thousands.

Thousands of sheep getting mauled alive in the dead of night with some surviving until discovery by distraught farmers.

One farmer told me of a calf found with its legs eaten off mid-birth.

None of these horror stories seem to hit the city media outlets, which is a great shame since the common thought is that inner-Melbourne affogato-sipping environmentalists are what’s putting pressure on the government.

Do they know that just one dog — one — can destroy $20,000 worth of lambing production, or that lambs need shooting at dawn with their guts dragging along the ground?

Kylie Cairn’s 2023 paper is a must read. If not, then see the link below for her summary on UNSW’s website.

Some farmers want to reject her science, but they shouldn’t for two very good reasons, both of which work in their favour.

I’ve had a thorough read. The science is quite robust: 23 genetic markers in 2015 suggested only one per cent of all dingoes were pure.

You don’t need to know what a marker is if I tell you just this: Dr Cairn’s study used 195,000 markers to find out the complete opposite of the 2015 study, that said more than 87 per cent of Victoria’s wild dogs are 99.99 per cent dingo.

Ninety thousand different ways of measuring something is far better than just 23.

It’s reversed the story, sure, but then think what one voyage by Magellan did to the shape of the planet.

Farmers need to accept the new research (on dingos, not a round earth).

First, it shows a widespread nature of accepting science as it gets better and better.

Secondly, environmentalists can now rest assured that the dingo is not close to extinction in eastern Victoria after all, so managing them outside of their natural habitat is less of a problem for the species’ survival.

The north-west is a different story, with the boffins agreeing that about 170 dingos remain there.

The east of the state holds possibly 4900.

That’s about one dingo having the area of Kyabram town all to itself, but of course they are not that evenly spread out.

The argument for protecting livestock will be better if we don’t squabble over genetics.

Yes, Dr Cairns was funded by a dingo research body but to suggest she has a political agenda is folly — that’s why we have peer reviewing — and is more in keeping with Big Tobacco’s ‘research’ of last century or the Soviet manipulation of Lysenkoism which saw hundreds of scientists imprisoned or executed.

But there is bad timing: the population numbers shown here were shared publicly but are not published, so the government may well ignore them.

However, my discussion with the right scientist has assured me there’s no conspiracy.

Farmers are the ones at the conservation coal face, not someone who’s never stepped outside of Kew, and so farmers need to speak up.

Grazier Gary Breadon said it perfectly to Country News: “Call them whatever you want, they are still going to prey on livestock.”

Just as importantly, Dr Cairns said to me: “They absolutely need to be managed. There has to be a balance.”

Read Kylie Cairn’s article at: https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2023/06/08/new-dna-testing-shatters-wild-dog-myth.html

Andy Wilson writes for Country News. He is a pre-peer review science editor in a range of fields and has a PhD in ecology from the University of Queensland.

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Friday, 26th July 2024

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