Wild dog threat: Move to end all control on public and private land

The Allan government is running a backroom review on wild dog controls, with farmers fearing changes will leave them unable to shoot or bait on their own land.

Declaring wild dogs like this dingoes risks stopping farmers shooting and baiting them on their own land. Picture: Doug Read

The Allan Government is running a backroom review on ending wild dog controls, which farmers fear will leave them unable to shoot or bait wild dogs on their own land.

The Weekly Times understands two members of the review panel are calling for all wild dogs to be declared dingoes and protected as a threatened species on private and public land.

Panel members will recommend to government whether the current unprotected status of dingoes on all private land and on crown land within 3kms farm boundaries should come to an end on September 30.

National Wild Dog Management Coordinator Greg Mifsud said: “If the unprotected status is not renewed the risk is the only means landholders will have is non-lethal control (of wild dogs), such as fencing and guardian animals.”

Even gaining authority to control wildlife permits will be challenging for farmers, given dingoes have already been declared a threatened species under Victoria’s Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988.

While farmers can obtain ATCW permits to shoot kangaroos and some other common native animals, Mr Mifsud said they may struggle to get permits to shoot dingoes as a threatened species if their unprotected status ends.

Ending lethal control also risks undermining the National Wild Dog Action Plan, which led to the introduction of aerial baiting and more co-ordinated landholder participation, with annual sheep losses falling from an average of about 4000 20 years ago to about 1139 from 2014 to 2019.

Swift’s Creek farmer Simon Turner said ending lethal wild dog control would devastate the livestock sector, with “30,000 sheep killed within a decade”.

Victorian Farmers Federation livestock councillor Peter Star said he hoped common sense would prevail and the government would extend the unprotected status of dingoes and not support the notion that all wild dogs are dingoes.

But he said the VFF had no representation on the eight-member review panel.

As for the right to control wild dogs on his own property, Mr Star said: “You would hope they would still be unprotected on private land”.

The current ministerial order that is due to expire on September 30 states “section 7A of the Wildlife Act 1975 declares the dingo … unprotected wildlife on: (a) all private land in Victoria; and (b) public land within 3 km of any private land boundary in the areas shown hatched in Schedule 1 of this Order”.