So what does the future hold for the dingo?

"So what does the future hold for the Dingo? In its travels throughout the country the dingo has faced many battles for survival against man and nature, from full scale eradication campaigns and enormous fences to unjustified victimisation and subversive genetic manipulations. Although dingoes have won most of the battles, the cruel irony is that they are steadily losing the war, thanks to their evolutionary progeny, domestic dogs. In the end, their chances of continued survival in the wild will rest solely on the efforts of an informed public to stop contact between Dingoes and domestic dogs, and to take pride in dingoes as native species". Dingoes are the largest terrestrial predator in Australia. However, they are now extinct over much of their former range and face widespread persecution in many areas where they remain. Predation by introduced mesopredators (cats and foxes) and overgrazing by sheep and cattle are the major threats to biodiversity in Australia, not the dingo. Dingoes benefit biodiversity conservation by reducing the abundance of foxes and large herbivores, thus reducing predation pressure on medium sized mammals and total grazing pressure. But the role of dingoes in Australian ecosystems is obviously not yet fully understood by the general public and a raging debate pits pastoralists and supportive state agencies against those engaged in dingo conservation and research. Meanwhile, pure Dingo lines are being exterminated and Australia’s record of extinctions keeps rising. The fact is, since the Europeans first settled in Australia the Australian continent has suffered the world's highest rate of mammal extinctions, with 30 species and subspecies lost. Many more species have declined and are by now at the brink of extinction, especially in arid and semi-arid parts of the continent. The presence of top predators are known to indirectly protect many species of prey from excessive predation. Cats and foxes can account for practically all of the mammal extinctions of the last two hundred years.” Studies have repeatedly shown that the rarity of Dingoes is a critical factor allowing these smaller predators to overwhelm marsupial prey, triggering extinctions over much of the continent. Despite the research, virtually all of Australia’s State Governments as well as the country’s huge pastoralist lobby continue to ignorantly support the wholesale extermination of the Dingo using lethal means of every kind including aerial baiting with Compound 1080. This is the case even though the Dingo has by now been declared endangered in Victoria. ~Gary Taylor Photography~