Media Release – November 11, 2019 - Please Share
‘Yes Minister’ – “Poisoning native animals is routine and justified”
It’s time to ask: “Is Victoria’s Minister for Agriculture, Jaclyn Symes, on top of her portfolio?”
The Minister for Agriculture is poised to make an important decision about whether to continue aerial baiting (from helicopters) on Victorian Crown Land to kill ‘wild dogs’ with controversial 1080 poison.
Of course, ‘wild dogs’ are really dingoes – our terrestrial native apex predator, crucial to maintaining ecosystem balance and stability in Victoria, much like wolves in north America. Because of this, 26 prominent Australian scientists recently jointly appealed to the Victorian government not to continue with aerial baiting with 1080, for which federal permission is due to expire.
Genetic research published in 2015 highlights the ‘wild dog’ propaganda being promoted by the Victorian Agriculture bureaucracy. Using hundreds of genetic samples from Victoria, the analysis found that 17.3% were pure/near pure dingoes, 81.2% were dingo dominant hybrids and that only 1.5% were feral domestic dogs. ( Stephens et al., ‘Death by sex in an Australian icon: a continent‐wide survey reveals extensive hybridization between dingoes and domestic dogs’, Molecular Ecology, pp. October 2015) 

Further, these figures almost certainly understate dingo purity levels in Victoria.

The reality is that the animals being routinely killed are dingoes, not ‘wild dogs’, and that there is no convincing evidence that dingo predation upon farm stock exists in Victoria on a significant scale. Officially reported stock loss from dingo predation in Victoria is less than 100 out of every million sheep. Insignificant!

But what is the Minister being told?

Fundamental questions need to be asked about the quality of the advice given to Minister Symes on this issue.
Has the Minister for Agriculture been adequately informed of the extremely low officially recorded numbers of sheep lost to dingo predation - so low that the current expensive and extensive regime of destruction of our native apex predator is scandalously lacking justification?

Is the Minister aware that there is no credible evidence that the introduction of aerial baiting with 1080 poison, by the Coalition government in 2014, has had any meaningful effect of farm stock loss to predation? Has the Minister been given a comprehensive briefing on the serious conservation implications of ongoing lethal control of dingoes in Victoria?
If the actual, very low stock loss numbers are given due consideration, the Minister would have no rational choice, but to reject continuation of aerial baiting. Another possibility is that the Minister is being swayed by political expediency, rather than rationality and good science? We hope this is not the case; Victorians and the natural environment deserve better.
Does the Minister have what it takes to scrutinise the flawed policy mindset that characterises her department on this issue and to question the pervasive powerful private vested interests which appear to exercise influence over her department, and which benefit from the overuse of poisons in the Victorian natural environment?
Contact: Association for Conservation of Australian Dingoes 
Photo: Backward Thinking - 19th Century thinking on display - Dingo Carcasses Gippsland Victoria