Dingoes to be collared in contentious bid to protect sheep

Wild dingoes locked in an “extinction vortex” in western Victoria will be fitted with electronic collars and monitored under a contentious plan being developed by the Allan government despite the opposition of traditional owners.

The plan to trap and collar dingoes has been ridiculed by dingo experts and conservationists, who derided it as hare-brained in a letter to government, and said the motivations for the proposal appeared to be political rather than scientific.

The Victorian government has been working on plans to fit critically endangered dingoes in the state’s west with electronic collars.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Collaring has been backed by landholders and the Victorian Farmers Federation, who say the number of dingo attacks on sheep on at least one property in the Mallee has doubled since dingoes in the Big Desert region were protected.

Stuart Harradine is spirit officer for Barengi Gadjin Land Council, which represents the Wotjobaluk Nations, which hold native title in the region. Harradine said his peoples were deeply concerned about the plan.

“Wotjobaluk Nations has not been adequately consulted on this matter,” he said. “We assert that if the state proceeds without proper consultation, it will violate the spirit of our RSA [recognition and settlement agreement]. Should the state insist on moving forward with this unscientific and culturally inappropriate action, we reserve the right to challenge this decision.”

A 2023 government declaration cited scientific research that showed Big Desert dingoes were “a discrete population that is now small, isolated, has very limited genetic diversity and has most likely entered an ‘extinction vortex’”.

Ecologists describe species as being in an extinction vortex when a declining population becomes vulnerable to extinction due to inbreeding and environmental challenges.

It is estimated there are 30 dingoes of breeding age left in Big Desert.

Dingoes in the Mallee region are at critically low numbers.Credit: Photograph by Chris Hopkins

Last March, the Victorian government ended an “unprotection order” in place for Big Desert dingoes, which had allowed them to be killed on public land despite being a threatened species in Victoria. Since then, the Victorian Farmers Federation and others have raised concerns about increased attacks on livestock in the area.

Federation president Brett Hosking argued dingoes should be fitted with boundary collars, which could deliver an electric shock when they approached private property.

“Having something as simple as a collar that reminds them, ‘hey, you’ve hit the boundary’, they very quickly learn that they know their behaviour is to stay within the park.”

They look like domestic dogs, or even like thylacines, but these little-known brindle dingoes are endemic to alpine regions of Victoria and NSW.Credit: Ian Brown/Michell J Photography & Equine

A government spokesman said this option would not be pursued.

“Tracking collars used for this research do not shock dingoes, nor do they have any capacity to harm the dingoes,” the spokesman said.

Final details of the collaring plan were still being finalised, he said, but the aim was to increase authorities’ understanding of dingo behaviour, habitat use and movements in the Big Desert Wilderness Park and Wyperfeld National Park, and neighbouring areas.

The data would not be used to track dingoes in real time.

Meliki, a black and tan purebred dingo, at the Dingo Discovery Sanctuary and Research Centre this week.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Dingo Foundation co-founder Lyn Watson said radio collars would weigh about 500 grams, and impede the dingoes’ ability to hunt marsupials.

“To put a weight there is to curtail his ability to keep alive, to hunt,” she said. “It’s an appalling thing to do to a dingo. It’s so much easier to collar the farm dogs and see if it’s really them that’re chasing your sheep. That’s what you’ll find.”

While 55 per cent of dingoes have the distinctive ginger coats usually associated with dingoes, a 2021 University of NSW study showed 14 per cent of pureblood dingoes were brindle, 11 per cent black and tan, 9 per cent sable, and 12 per cent black, white or patchy.

The Big Desert dingoes are often sable and black and tan, and dingo experts say these markings can lead farmers to conclude they are feral domestic dogs, or dingo-dog hybrids.

Meliki the dingo at the Dingo Discovery Sanctuary and Research Centre in Toolern Vale this week.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Greg Misfud is the national wild dog management co-ordinator at the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions, which advocates baiting, trapping, shooting, fencing and the use of guardian animals as tools for “managing” wild dogs, including dingoes.

Misfud confirmed the electronic tracking of Big Desert dingoes was his proposal, and said radio monitoring would allow landholders to make informed decisions about managing their land.

“You can actually see in far greater detail how the dogs are actually using the landscape, where they’re travelling, what times of year they’re coming in and out of private property.”

Australian Dingo Foundation director Melinda Browning questioned whether the Agriculture Department was best placed to be involved in the management of a threatened species.

More than 50 per cent of pure dingoes have distinctive ginger and white coats.Credit: Photograph by Chris Hopkins

“The collaring idea came directly from the co-ordinator of the National Wild Dog action plan. This organisation is a government-funded organisation involved in the killing of dingoes on a mass scale,” she said.

Browning said trapping the animals to fit them with collars raised the risks of distress and potential injury and death.

Paul Paton, chief executive of the Federation of Victorian Traditional Owner Corporations, called on the Victorian government to immediately commit to genuine partnership with traditional owner groups to jointly make decisions for culturally significant species, including the dingo.

“The federation has consistently advocated for an approach to species management that centres on traditional owner groups’ holistic worldviews, and the centrality of Country, as a dynamic, interconnected tapestry of culture and ecology, not merely a set of separated species.”

It was a call echoed by professor of wildlife ecology and conservation Dr Euan Ritchie.

“It’s important when controversial management actions and research projects are proposed that all voices and values are heard and respected. It’s unclear how this is the case when First Nations peoples in the area have made it very clear they don’t support the collaring of Wilkerr (dingoes) on their Country.”

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