Deadly catch as dingoes go to paradise

If there were a heaven for Australia’s long-persecuted native dogs, it might be an island of their own, untroubled by humans and all the fresh food they can eat.

Four dingoes, considered a pest in the Outback, are to get exactly that – but it’s a one-way ticket: each will have a time bomb – a tiny capsule of poison – inserted between their shoulders that will open after two years if they are still alive.

In a controversial experiment the male dingoes are being released on to the uninhabited Pelorus Island, 15km off the coast of Queensland in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, to rid the island of hundreds of wild goats descended from those brought to Australia by the British more than 200 years ago.

The native dogs will have two years to accomplish their mission on the 400-hectare island, which was covered by rainforest until the goats rendered much of it barren.

Once the goats have been killed by the dingoes, hunters will arrive to shoot the dogs, but in case the dingoes prove elusive, the capsule inserted beneath their skin will ensure that they die. Once it opens, death will be quick.

The experiment, announced on Sunday, has already begun. One dingo is on the island and three are to follow, once they have been trapped on the rangelands of mainland Australia and fitted with a radio tracking collar and the capsule of poison.

The island’s custodians, the shire of Hinchinbrook, turned to the dingoes after other methods to rid the island of goats failed.

Early settlers brought them as food for lighthouse keepers and sailors, but the goats have devastated the forest, a habitat for native mammals.

The Twitter feed of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which ran a documentary on the eve of the experiment, received outraged comments from viewers expressing alarm – mostly for the goats.

‘‘We complain about how cattle are killed at the hands of some humans but have no problem releasing dogs to slaughter,’’ one wrote.

Lee Allen, a dingo expert at the University of Southern Queensland who helped to design the experiment, said he expected the forests and native mammals to regenerate rapidly once the goats were gone.

He said that turning dingoes loose on wild goats had been tried on another island 23 years ago. It took the dingoes only two years to destroy 3000 goats, but it took another decade to kill the dingoes, which turned on native wildlife once they’d eaten all the goats.

‘‘We don’t want that to happen here,’’ he said.