Media Release Self-culling dingo proposal morally and environmentally bankrupt
National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program (Inc. A0051763G )
Date: Thursday June 30, 2016
Secretary of the National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program Inc. (NDPRP Inc.), Dr Ernest Healy, today slammed the idea of releasing dingoes with pre-timed poison devices implanted inside them as morally and environmentally bankrupt.
This week, it has been reported that dingoes have been released on Pelorus Island in Queensland to rid the Island of its population of feral goats. The dingoes, which have been neutered, have also had capsules of deadly 1080 poison implanted under their skin, designed to dissolve in about two years time. The advocates clearly expect that this approach will be used more widely across Australia.
Dr Healy stated:
“First, the use of 1080 poison for the pre-timed killing of the dingoes is cruel. 1080 poison is widely considered to result in a prolonged and agonising death. How such a proposal got past any credible animal research ethics approval process, either within a university or government department, beggars belief.”
“Second, despite the claim that this use of dingoes would be environmentally beneficial, it is really designed to sidestep a genuinely satisfactory environmental outcome, which would include the permanent reintroduction of dingo populations to their former range where the habitat is suitable.”
Increasingly, major conservation organisations and prominent environmental scientists have advocated for the reintroduction of dingoes into their former range as a way to help restore ecosystem health. In the view of these scientists, the historical removal of dingoes as farming activity expanded has contributed to the fragility of Australian ecosystems and to Australia’s appalling extinction rate of native species, particularly small mammal species.
However, because of the long-term hostility of the sheep industry to dingoes, inherited from the colonial period, dingoes have continued to be purged from vast areas near to sheep farming and the well-being of the natural environment has remained a lower-order priority for governments.
Rather than search for a workable historic compromise between the interests of the sheep farming industry and ecosystem health, which would involve the permanent reintroduction of dingoes and acknowledgement of their important environmental role, the proposal to program introduced dingoes for a pre-scheduled cruel death relies upon and perpetuates the worst misconceptions about the dingo, that it too is just a pest animal with no intrinsic environmental value – to be eradicated.
Dr Healy stated:
“The Orwellian concept of using ‘self-culling’ dingoes to kill introduced pests, and that they too then be exterminated as pests by a pre-programmed poison device after having done their good work, is not only cruel, but merely avoids the need for a mature and genuine historic resolution of the conflict between sheep farming and the natural environment in Australia. Many Australians would correctly find such a callous misuse of an iconic native animal to be repugnant.”
Contact:
Dr Ernest Healy, Secretary NDPRP Inc., 0438378430 (mob.), ernest.healy@monash.edu
Dr Ian Gunn BVSc. FACVSc. President NDPRP, 0427 387778 (mob.) ian.gunn@monash.edu
I couldn’t even watch that program to the end. Who even comes up with these disgusting ideas ?
As a Wildlife Carer, I am witnessing the destruction of our Wildlife by ferral cats, foxes and and…, every day. If there were Dingos out there, as they used to be, these pests would be kept at bay.
Why do people have to interfere into nature all the time, it always goes wrong ! Just see the cane toads.
What can we do to stop this horrific use of these Dingos ?
In Western Australia, even in National Parks the WA Department of Parks and Wildlife bait Dingos. Is it any wonder that our Ground Parrots are critically endangered mostly because of cat and fox predation. Dingos kill and eat feral cats as well as rabbits and foxes.
Before Europeans came to Australia, Dingos ate mostly small kangaroos and wallabies. After white man arrived with their rabbits and goats, sheep and cattle they tried to cull all the dingos as the would take sheep. No wonder Australia is overrun by rabbits.
With the decline of the wool industry pastoralists still blame the Dingo for their woes, not the fact that most jumpers are now made of acrylic fibre and people just don’t wear woollen underwear any more.
Farmers that keep sheep have the opportunity of using heard dogs such as Maremma Sheep Dogs and perhaps they may not complain that their farm is being overrun by kangaroos.
Putting Sodium fluoroacetate (1080) in a capsule so that the dingo dies from an agonising poison after two years in not only cruel but a waste of a resource. These animals have tracking collars and could quite easily be caught when they have ridded the island of the feral goats and moved to another island and rid it of feral goats.
When will those in government realise the value of a native top predator to the environment.
The fact suppirt was granted for such an offensice barbaric and unethical contradiction to conservation is incomprehensible. Ben Allen is a scientist “bootlace” and his degree of lowlife ignorance should aee any credentials stripped away for abuse and cruelty. The contradiction to conservation is the deafening silence by the vast scientific community that often enjoy notoriety in social media has certainly tarnished their credibility and respect as well as legitimacy. Particularly due to these people making a living from the Apex Guardian of the Ecosystem Canis Dingo which needs to have their listing rectified and should have these “silent Scientists demanding such backward draconian mindset be immidiate and without fail corrected Nationally to orotect what is presently listed as vermin in their homeland its even more of a paradox as Dingoes are acknowledged and recognized as uniquely different with their own unique species title of Canis Dingo. Internationally Canis Dingo is granted the red listing as a vulnerable species yet in Australia such idiots as Ben Allen who also endorses Dingo cuisine to China mskes a mockery of the title Scientist which symbolism of a Frankenstein scientific catastrophe which condones barbaric practice of inserting a class 1a deadliest poison 1080 banned by all civilized countries on earth and abided by demand from the WHO. We have a duty of care to shut down such incredibly unethical behavior. The entire fiasco could have been sensibly removed 300 of the Goats on the Iskand with tge commonsense approach using a Judas Goat at the waterhole with sonebody wirh fitesrms going about in a humane result instead of this callous and brutal damaged promotion which saw Dingoes pkucjed from the mainland possibly from a once healthy Dingo colony. Creating the exasperation process that causes wild Dog destabilization of the ecosystem in that breakdown of balance by mayhem and competitive anarchy. Then the brutal danaged goods so rhey can never relocate wirhout being killed by other Dingoes after sterilization and dumped onto the island the next day with capsules of 1080 inserted to explode as reward uoon ridding the island of the problem Goats. Such is the stupidity of idiots with credentials and no commonsense . The only way evil can triumph is fir good people to remain silent. The fiasco was shut down after such a huge mainstream public outcry. A save face rot about rhe plight of endangered birds didn’t cut the mustard. They all knew what whwn and who was population on the Island before initiating such waroed and revoltibg shameful action. The fact these morons attqin any fundingat all is quite incomprehensible and highlights why this country’s world record in mammal extinction is retaining such position die to ignorance.
I am so happy to see modern day thinking and common sense have compassionately over-ruled this barbaric program. I am hopeful the discussion on dingo meat exportation to the dog meat trade, and the discussion in regards to engineering a disease that would only inflict a kill on the dingo population will also be shutdown.