I only just came across this (highly recommended) video of wild dogs in the Brindabella Mountains in footage taken by ABC Stateline. It is dated March 2010 and shows a pack of wild dogs living within the National Park. I'm not so sure I would be tempting fate beyond nightfall like Mr Piper but hey! that's just my experience...

The Stateline program with excellent ACT Dingo footage - March 2010
(update: The video has expired but a transcript remains... shame)

Wild Dogs maul sheep on the ACT border - An ABC Rural report dated 2008

ACT Government wild dog management plan (pdf) March 2011


This one minute ramble below is more to show people not from Canberra just one of the views of the Brindabella's (and apparently dingo habitat) available in the Tuggeranong Burbs...



So are they wild dogs or dingos? 1 in 4 DNA tested as pure dingo. Should the population be managed as a native species and like any other pure breed keep the DNA as pure as we can maintain. Effectively re-establish the dominance of the Dingo? Or should we let the gene pool perish away with an unwanted introduced feral pest? Conundrums for the National Geographic reader perhaps but something the government should probably address before the population becomes 0.2 in 4 pure dingo.

Historically speaking dingos have always been a problem for graziers in the area of today's ACT. 1840 Lanyon's first burial is reported to have had heavy stones placed upon the coffin to deter the dingo's. Convicts were flogged for losing sheep in their care often at lonely outstations.

I also note in the article by ABC Rural: "The livestock protection collar is a bladder of 1080 poison to go around the sheeps' neck." Very reminiscent of an idea from 1929 where the suggestion was to use cod hooks (fish hooks) on a collar to catch the dogs. Fishing for dingos post.

Fast forward to 2011 and wild dogs be they native or introduced are still a problem coming out of our (now) National Parks. The article from Rural ABC also seems to quip the suggestion of fencing off the entire Gudgenby Valley, a big ask.

Anyway I'm not sure what should be done but with a little historical knowledge I can attest to several native species that were brought to extinction in the past 190 years and the dingo it seems will fall to the same fate by gene pool destruction, poisoning, trapping and shooting. Bit sad really...

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