Dingo and billy goat in fatal face-off on survivor island
In the ultimate survivor contest, a wild dog was fitted with a “suicide collar” in a controversial fatal face-off with feral intruders in a bid to stop them destroying a pristine, tropical island on the Great Barrier Reef. Here’s how it went down.
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IT’S the death-row dingo vs a lone billy goat.
In the ultimate survivor title contest, a wild dog fitted with a “suicide collar” is in a fatal face-off with a solo goat on a tropical Great Barrier Reef island.
Rare property on Pelorus Island sold to Morris Group
Both animals are the last two standing after a controversial three-year feral pest project to cull about 300 destructive goats eating rare littoral rainforest on Pelorus Island, 80km north of Townsville.
Hunted by airborne snipers shooting from helicopters, they dodged trackers and evaded traps, while their dire plight sparked outcry among animal rights activists.
Both are marked for death.
“The goats are gone,” Hinchinbrook Shire mayor Ramon Jayo told The Sunday Mail.
“The wild dogs did their job. Vegetation is growing back on the island. It worked. End of story.”
Cr Jayo was reluctant to talk because of threats and abuse over the council plan to stop goats ruining the island, slated for a luxury $15,000-a-night boutique getaway retreat.
Two desexed dingoes – surgically implanted with time-delayed poison pellets – were released in 2016 in a radical pest control program to exterminate a plague of goats on the 4sq km rocky island in the Great Palm Island Group, off Lucinda.
In what was hailed an environmental success, latest surveys show the apex predators killed off all but one goat.
Council rangers believe one of the wild dogs is also still alive.
State Environment Minister Steven Miles branded it a “cruel experiment” when the two wild dogs were first released with lethal capsules of 1080 poison implanted in the neck and designed to dissolve after two years to administer a fatal dose.
The plan was the dogs would die after their work was done.
But it appears one dose failed to activate, officials say, and rangers are now hunting the survivor to humanely euthanise the animal.
RSPCA and animal rights activists opposed the project dubbed “death-row dingoes” by Dr Miles, who moved to block it despite approval by an independent Animal Ethics Committee to trial the native predators as a form of pest control.
Last year the council was recompensed $86,000 after a court overturned an interim order by Dr Miles to scrap the program and remove the dingoes.
“The much-maligned feral goat control project on Pelorus Island has been a success,” read a report by the Hinchinbrook local marine advisory committee to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
“The goats that once plagued the island reserve have been culled.
“With the goats all but gone, the native vegetation is recovering exceptionally well and there has been no negative impact on native fauna.”
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