The Association for Conservation of Australian Dingoes (AFCAD) today urged State and Federal governments to ensure that wildlife bushfire recovery programs do not actually worsen biodiversity outcomes.

Post-fire wildlife recovery programs, including in New South Wales and Victoria, plan widespread shooting and poison baiting over vast fire effected areas, and remaining unaffected areas, to kill invasive pest animals that pose a threat to recovering native wildlife.

A serious deficiency in this approach is the almost certain killing of surviving dingo populations in fire impacted and surrounding areas. Perversely, this reflects ingrained government policy confusion, which continues to incorrectly identify dingoes as ‘invasive pests’, rather than native wildlife, important to ecosystem health.

As with other Australian jurisdictions, government departments in Victoria and New South Wales continue to refer to ‘wild dogs’ as invasive species, even though genetic research shows that there are virtually no feral domestic dogs in the Australian natural environment and dingo hybrids remain at a high level of genetic purity. When fire recovery programs target ‘wild dogs’ they are actually killing dingoes - a native Australian animal.

Not only does this deceive the Australian public, but it stands to undermine ecological recovery in the medium to longer term. A keystone species, the dingo benefits small animals and plant communities by suppressing the behaviours of non-native invasive predators like foxes and feral cats.

It has been found internationally that diminishing native predator populations tends to be associated with ecosystem instability and other native species decline. Similarly, ecological research in Australian ecosystems has increasingly demonstrated the importance of conserving dingoes for ecosystem health and the preservation of biodiversity.
Yet, the National Wild Dog Action Plan, to which the Victorian and New South Wales governments are signatories, defines “wild dogs” as “all wild-living dogs”, which include dingoes. Even in Victoria, where dingoes are listed as threatened native wildlife under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act, the government has signed up to this reckless policy - essentially a document created by extreme elements within the farming and poison industries.

The misguided or inadvertent destruction of surviving dingo populations by governments, as part of wildlife fire recovery programs, is likely to undermine ecosystem recovery in the medium to longer term and may lead to the local extinction of dingoes in some regions.

We urge all who oppose the NSW baiting program to contact New South Wales Minister for the Environment Matt Kean and express your opposition.  

Contact Matt Kean MP Phone: (02) 9476 3411 Fax: (02) 9476 2965

Photo Credit: Michele J Photography (With gratitude)