Wallaby and possum top dingo menu: not feral cats and foxes

As Victoria’s wild dog control program comes up for review, research shows what feral species dingoes do and don’t eat. See the full list.

Former dog controller Ian Campbell cut these dingo pups out of a log, where their mother had left an echidna for them to feed on.

Research examining the contents of 5875 individual wild dog scats has shown they consume cats and foxes at relatively low frequencies, preferring instead to chase down wallabies to top the menu.

Former Victorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries’ funded research from 2014 found wallabies, brushtail possums, rabbits, wombats and possums were the most frequently detected animal remains in Victoria’s wild dog and dingo scats.

Just 0.14 per cent of the scats contained cat and 0.17 per cent fox remains.

The research is set to play a pivotal role in the 2024 review of Victoria’s wild dog control program, which will examine the dingo’s role as an apex predator, including its ability to control cats and foxes.

The 2014 DEPI research, led by University of Melbourne honorary fellow and now Parks Victoria environmental scientist Naomi Davis, reported dog diets varied dramatically across the state, with insects found in 39 per cent of Mallee dog scats, along with plant material at 26.6 per cent, rabbit at 17.8 per cent and sheep at 15.38 per cent.

In contrast black wallaby dominated the diet of eastern Victoria’s wild dogs, with the small macropod found in 36 per cent of East Gippsland’s scats, 29 per cent in the North East and 26.7 per cent of those in South and West Gippsland.

Sheep remains were found at frequencies of just 1.41 per cent in East Gippsland and 1.31 per cent in the North East, which Victorian Farmers Federation livestock councillor Peter Star said was probably due to impact of doggers’ trapping and baiting efforts, plus a decline in number of producers running sheep across the east over the past 40 years.

Former Victorian government dog trapper Ian Campbell said he collected scats for the research team at the time, with echidna spines one of the most obvious things he found.

Mr Campbell said that after 27 years working in the bush as a wild dog controller he had seen plenty of wild dogs’ dinner remains.

“About four years ago I cut four pups out of a log at Jarvis Creek (near Tallangatta) and out front the bitch had left an echidna, kangaroo and lamb leg,” Mr Campbell said. “People in town don’t realise these wild dogs are decimating wildlife in the bush.”

The DEPI-funded research found the frequency of echidna remains in dog scats varied from 6.47 per cent in the Mallee, to about 2 per cent in the state’s east, while Australia’s other monotreme, the platypus, was rarely found, with the highest incidence 0.96 per cent in South and West Gippsland.

The DEPI research found:

ELEVEN mammal species of conservation significance listed under state and federal legislation, and/or on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list, were recorded in the diets of wild dogs but at “frequencies of less than 0.4 per cent”.

FOXES occurred in the diet of wild dogs at low frequency of 0.2 per cent.

WILD dog was recorded in the diet of wild dogs at 0.5 per cent.

WILD dogs and foxes consumed cats at relatively low and similar frequencies.

The findings are crucial in the current government’s review into whether its current wild dog control policy should continue, which allows trapping, baiting and shooting of wild dogs on public land within 3km of private property boundaries across Eastern Victoria and the far northwest.

The Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action website states the review is being conducted “in light of new scientific research regarding the status of what were previously understood to be wild dogs (feral domestic dogs), or dingo-dog hybrids”, plus its role “as Victoria’s largest native apex predator, the dingo plays an important ecological role in shaping ecosystem health”.