The dog days aren't over

#26—On wolves and dingoes, and determining what lives and dies.

Welcome to Mind Flexing, your weekly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.

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The wolves were camped on the edge of the pine forest, which cut a straight line of shade down the side of the grassy plains of Yellowstone’s Hayden Valley. There were seven—three adults and four pups born six months before—happily rolling, playing, frolicking, and eyeing the thousands of bison rutting in the August sun of 2010. At the centre of the pack was 06—the most famous wolf in the world, the wolf that changed everything, the Alpha Female—with her grey-brown coat and whisper white legs, doting over her pups while holding court. I was captivated. Watching these beautiful creatures from a safe distance through a telescope, I knew I was witnessing something special, the stuff of legend—and that legend was just beginning.

Wolf 06, a strong, intelligent, independent and beautiful female, had turned down every suitor to approach her. It was strange for a wolf—and a desired one at that—to remain single for so long, but 06 had high standards and it wasn’t until she was at the ripe middle-age of four that she met two young brothers, 074 and 075, that finally had the combined qualities she was looking for in a mate, and together they formed the Lamar Canyon Pack. Wolf 06 smashed the long-held belief that packs were run by Alpha males—she clearly called the shots—and she was good at it. The 06 Female, named for the year of her birth, would have 13 pups with a 100% survival rate, which was remarkable given a pup mortality rate of between 40% and 60%. Once, when a grizzly bear came to attack her pups in their den, she ran and bit the grizzly on the backside. Annoyed, the bear turned to chase her before giving up and heading back towards the den, but 06 didn’t give up. She bit the bear again and, again the bear turned and gave chase, a manoeuvre 06 performed 54 times until the bear had chased her so far from the den it gave up. She was known to have singlehandedly taken down a young grizzly and outrun an attack of 17 wolves from the notoriously vicious Mollies Pack.

I didn’t go to Yellowstone with an expectation of seeing 06. In fact, it hadn’t even crossed my mind. It just so happened that my soon-to-be husband and I were cycling past a group of people standing alongside the road with telescopes. We were mountain biking from Canada to Mexico. They looked at us with amusement and we, sensing their excitement at whatever was at the other end of their lenses, stopped to have a chat. We had stumbled across the wolf watchers on what turned out to have been an ideal day to have done so, and it’s a memory I will forever cherish.

06, water colour by Alia Parker.

Our Australian dingoes don’t have fan clubs or researchers that track their packs and interactions in quite the same way that the gray wolves of Yellowstone do. Who knows what stories have gone untold. For Australia’s First Nations cultures, dingoes are especially important as companions, protectors and as part of the Dreaming. But modern Australian culture doesn’t celebrate dingoes—not in the same way as wolves are romanticised in American stories, especially through the eyes of First Nations cultures. For most Australians, their only encounter with dingoes will be through the heartbreaking death story of baby Azaria Chamberlain, or from the odd news report of a dingo attack on K’gari (formerly Fraser Island). Dingoes are seen as a nuisance to farmers and hunted to prevent the loss of livestock (a challenge that also faces the gray wolf). It’s only more recently that the story of Wandi—the dingo pup that fell from the sky—has taken a positive tone and started to spread some understanding among Australians of the important role dingoes play in the ecosystem.

I recently saw a headline about dingoes in The Weekly Times that raised my eyebrow. It said:

“Scientists rule dingoes are just dogs: Not a threatened species.”

You may remember a few months ago I wrote in Waiting for dingoes that the Victorian State government is reviewing the ‘unprotection order’ that allows dingoes—which are meant to be a protected species—to be killed on private property and within a 3km buffer zone on public land that adjoins private land. The review’s findings are due in October this year, but as I mentioned, the government surprised everyone by prematurely ending the unprotection order in one part of the state—northwest Victoria—due to the high threat of dingo extinction in those parts. As Sonya Takau, founder of Dingo Culture, mentioned in the comments, the Wotjobaluk people of that Country played a key role in lobbying for urgent protection for dingoes in the northwest.

Since that announcement, and ahead of the review’s findings later this year, farmers’ lobby groups have intensified their fight to ensure they retain their right to kill dingoes on and around their properties and to have the unprotection order reinstated in the northwest. The issue has been heavily covered by Beef Central, Sheep Central and The Weekly Times and largely ignored elsewhere with the exception of a quiet story or two on ABC Online.

It has been 10 years since it was argued that dingoes were a separate species, canis dingo, a scientific name that was adopted in 2019. Now Australia’s top 20 taxonomists have backflipped, declaring dingoes to be an ancient dog breed, canis familiaris, not a species.

National Wild Dog Action Plan Co-ordination Committee chair Geoff Power jumped on the news saying that the statement confirmed dingoes no longer qualified as a threatened species and Victoria should review its order to protect them.

It’s a strange argument. Whether or not the dingo is a species or an ancient dog breed is not only semantic, but when it comes to whether or not it should be protected or killed, it’s irrelevant. Regardless of which definition is prescribed, dingoes remain a unique animal found nowhere else in the world, an animal that has evolved in ways no other dog breed has, a highly intelligent, independent and flexible creature that fulfils a symbiotic role in Australian ecology, and a creature that holds huge cultural importance to Australia’s Traditional Owners, and to many Australians too. They are irreplicable.

Even the Australasian Mammal Taxonomy Consortium (AMTC), the group of scientists that announced the declaration regarding the dingoes classification as canis familiaris, said in the declaration itself that the change didn’t impact the importance of the dingo—a line Geoff Power and other lobbyist have conveniently ignored. AMTC said:

…“[the] name and distinctiveness of the dingo is a separate issue to its ecological and cultural role. Naming the dingo as a separate species should not be necessary to protect it and recognise its value to Australians, and to species and ecosystem conservation.”

My apologies for linking that quote to KidsNews, but it was the only source to report it.

Dingo or ‘wild dog’ attacks on livestock are a real issue for farmers, particularly those bordering National Parks. And if dingo numbers are allowed to recover, livestock attacks in bushland areas will most certainly increase—unless of course, farmers put alternative control measures in place. These include exclusion fencing and defence animals, such as alpacas. Exclusion fencing, while effective, is very expensive and as it stands, the farmers’ lobby groups don’t believe it is an economical answer. They would prefer to maintain the more affordable status quo of the unprotection order.

In the meantime, I’m still waiting to hear the alpine dingoes call from the hills across the creek from my home. It’s strange to have reached the Winter Solstice and to not have heard them howl. The breeding season is over. Have they succumbed to the 1080 poison baits? Have they been shot? Or are they just somewhere else this year? I don’t know.

What are their stories? What would we say of them if we kept watch over their packs like the wolf watchers of The 06 Female?

Should we continue to allow them to be killed on private property? Should they be a casualty of economics?

The story of wolves in the United States may help you form your answer.

Americans may celebrate a more romantic notion of wolves than we of dingoes, but that couldn’t prevent them from being hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states. It was only in 1995, after a 70-year absence, that conservation efforts oversaw the reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park.

In December 2012, The 06 Female and her mates 074 and 075 followed a group of elk over the invisible boundary of Yellowstone. The largest among them, 074, was shot and killed by a trophy hunter who had been issued a legal permit to shoot gray wolves by the state of Wyoming. Wolves 06 and 075 returned to their den, but not understanding what had happened, went back to look for 074. The most famous and beloved wolf in the world—the wolf that changed everything, the Alpha Female 06—was shot and killed. Her head now hangs on someone’s wall. Twelve years later, the world still mourns her loss and everything she taught us.

Things I’ve enjoyed on Substack this week

• On Seeing Shades of Grey; Unlocking Alice Munro After 40 Years—by Kim Van Bruggen

  Kim shares her journey on coming to appreciate the work of the late great Alice Munro.

• The Illumination of Knowledge—by Diamond-Michael Scott

  After my essay last week that touched on the differences in cognition experienced when reading on paper versus screen, I found this essay quite complimentary.

• All The Life Coaches Have Life Coaches—by Tom Cox

  If my story has left you in need of a laugh, Tom has lined up enough of them to keep you covered all week. Enjoy!

Etymology Monday

For those who missed it, this week’s word is: druthers

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