Eyewitness report from Fraser Island 20/11/09

Eyewitness report from Fraser Island

"I understand that DERM recently announced as part of their management strategy for FI, that dingoes would be discouraged (by hazing) from walking along the beach before 5pm and after 5am, in an attempt to keep them away from people.

This evening, at 5.45 pm, during an evening walk along the beach on FI I saw a young dingo bitch and her puppy patrolling the high tide line (clearly they have learnt the new rules). The bitch went over the dune and disappeared, but the pup lingered on the dune and was still visible from the beach but simply minding its own business when it was spotted by a ranger’s vehicle. The rangers stopped instantly, did an extremely tight u-turn and hazed the pup with a slingshot. The pup was hit, the shot frightened the life out of it, and it disappeared over the dune. The rangers then tore off down the beach.

I went over to investigate; it seemed the pup had run into a swamp type area and was howling. The bitch appeared and looked extremely concerned. She must have witnessed the event, and seemed too scared to come out of her hiding place to find her pup, which continued to howl.

If this is not disrupting pack structure, I don’t know what is. If this is not sport, I don’t know how else to describe it. Might I also add that the bitch had an ear that was tagged so badly the ear was drooping to the point of being closed, and it looked like some debris was lodged in the tag.

The bitch went in search of her pup, and I was left wondering what the management of Frazer island has come to, that innocent creatures are no longer allowed, within their DERM-allocated time slot, to go about their usual behaviors. There were a few other people on the beach at the time, I hope they didn’t see the disgraceful way that the rangers behaved towards our island’s most valuable tourist draw-card."

Ed Comment; This disgracefull behavior by FI Rangers against the dingoes is inexcusable. In spite of a decade of the community expressing concern to Government about the treatment of dingoes on Fraser Island, its all fallen on deaf ears.

Dingoes 12/11/09

Fraser Island dingo protection activists have asked questions in the Queensland Parliament relating to Dr Laurie Corbett's qualifications to undertake an "independent" audit of the Fraser Island dingoes. Corbett devised the origonal Fraser Island Dingo Management Plan that has been widely criticised, and has accounted for the deaths of many of the Islands dingoes. He has just completed a so-called "independent" audit which claims every thing is okay, and the Management Plan is working! We suppose it all depends on what the Plan is meant to accomplish.......

Alpine Dingoes

A pair of rare alpine dingoes is heading north to call the Fraser Coast home. TESS Wildlife Sanctuary supervisor Ray Revill said yesterday that Queensland’s Department of Environment had told him this week that he could bring the dingoes from Victoria providing he built the fenced enclosure “according to our rules”. “I just have to raise the money to build the dingoes’ new home and I need to pay $600 to the wildlife sanctuary down south to buy the pups and $240 to fly them up here.” The dingoes, a male and female, are three months old. “One is reddish-blond and the other black and tan. They are both beautiful dogs and DNA tests done on them show they are pure dingo. There’s no dog in them at all.” Mr Revill said he had tried to convince EPA to let him have a couple of Fraser Island dingoes for his sanctuary “for educational purposes”. But they told me those dogs over there had never been successfully held or able to breed in captivity. “I was a ranger on the island for over seven years so I dispute that but rules are rules.”

The alpine dingo, a sub-species of the dingo, is on the verge of extinction. Former CSIRO dingo specialist Alan Newsome, who led the last investigation undertaken on the dingo more than 20 years ago, said in the late ’90s that the dingo was slowly but surely being wiped out as a result of cross-breeding or hybridisation with domestic breeds of dog that had turned feral. Les Hall of Griffith, one of only three breeders of alpine dingo in New South Wales at the time, said there were only 10 breeding pairs of the alpine dingo left in captivity in New South Wales and 25 in Australia. Estimates of wild alpine dingoes vary at around the 150 mark. Biologists consider a species to be extinct when there are fewer than 500. *Fraser Coast Chronicle

Ed Comment; Unfortunately the NSW Government has been aerial dropping 1080 poison over the alpine dingo habitat, to protect sheep farmers from stock losses. Like so many other species of wildlife, the Australian dingo is unlikey to survive in the wild, especially the alpines.