Dingo culls make packs more deadly
Dingoes are so loathed that farmers and hunters in the Outback hang their carcasses from trees in a macabre trophy display and as a warning to the rest of the pack. The wild dogs have been credited with killing at least two children and are frequently blamed by farmers for the deaths of sheep and cattle.
However, a unique experiment has suggested that they are not the natural born killers that landowners have long supposed, and that culling them may be counterproductive.
Ecologists took over a cattle station and allowed the wild dingoes there to roam freely for two years, to see what would happen to the farm’s 1000 cattle if the dogs were no longer shot, poisoned or caught in traps.
The researchers recorded 56 cattle deaths, but only eight were caused by the dingoes. Dehydration and natural causes accounted for the others.
The conclusion they have drawn is that hunting or trapping wild dingoes disrupts the socially complex groups in which they live. Numbers increase as more females reproduce at younger ages, and the dingoes stray into new territories, resulting in more attacks on livestock.
Arian Wallach, an Israeli ecologist, said that in socially cohesive dingo packs, dominant adults ensured that very young dogs did not breed, and destroyed the pups of those that did.
If young dingoes did succeed at breeding, they had difficulty holding on to their prey – even struggling to ward off carrion birds – and were forced to kill more often, Wallach said.
‘‘This has also been seen with other big predators such as leopards.
‘‘Other studies around the world show that killing predators for livestock protection is generally counterproductive,’’ he said. The Times