Waiting for dingoes

#14—Will their howls fill the valley once more?

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This time of year, as the nights chill and winter creeps nearer, the hauntingly beautiful howls of dingoes can be heard from across the creek at the bottom of our hill. I’m yet to hear them this year, but I tell myself not to worry, breeding season is just beginning. And so I wait, hoping each night to hear them call, their voices ringing out across the valley saying, “We are here, another year, we did not eat the poison baits, and the bounty hunters did not scalp us.”

‘Wild dogs’ is the term most prescribed to them in Victoria. We were led to believe alpine dingoes vanished long ago, having hybridized with domestic canines to near extinction. When viewed this way, we tend not to bat an eyelid when reading the 1080 poison baiting notifications sent to our mailbox. We tend not to question the farmers who, to protect their livestock, kill them, trading their pelts for a $120 bounty offered by the State Government.

Wandi the dingo, sketch by Alia Parker.

Having lived in suburbia, I’ve heard my share of barking dog cacophonies at night. They were never soothing, if anything, quite agitating. So why, I thought, do the dogs of the mountains howl so enchantingly? There must be a little dingo left in them.

There was excitement in the community in 2019 when DNA tests confirmed that a five-week-old dingo pup found in a backyard in Wandiligong in Victoria’s High Country was 100% pure. The pup was scratched and clawed, and likely fell from the clutches of a wedge-tailed eagle.

They called him Wandi, and he changed everything.

A year later, a small dingo pup named Sooty was found by a farmer near Jamieson, and within another year, dirt bikers found two pups, Myrtle and Moko, while riding near Myrtleford. DNA tests confirmed, all were 100% pure. It is believed the pups were all orphaned due to wild dog culls.

Unprotection

Dingoes are a protected species, under threat and in some areas, near extinct. Some downplay the importance of dingoes, arguing that as they were introduced, they are not native. DNA tracing shows Australian dingoes share a common ancestry with the domestic dogs of South-East Asia. A split occurred somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, and since then, dingoes have evolved into a separate species found only in Australia. Conservationists say they play an important role in maintaining ecological balance, having replaced the thylacine—known as the Tasmanian tiger—as the apex predator on the mainland.

Since colonisation, dingoes have been hunted to protect livestock. As numbers dwindled, they made the ranks of the threatened species list, and became protected. At least, that’s what the official documents said. You see, there is this thing called ‘unprotection’.

Unprotection. The word rolls off my tongue like a shard of glass. Unlike the word unprotected, which has widespread usage and highlights a vulnerability and need of protection, unprotection, has an air that is somewhat cruel. It conjures a sense of something exposed, something intentionally made vulnerable, something deliberately forced into danger. It appears to be a word that has come about through government jargon.

Unprotection. Such as in an Unprotection Order: legislation that unprotects a protected species, allowing it to be killed.

Dingoes can be killed on private land. And outside this space, in the State Forests and National Parks, the State’s Wild Dog Management Plan actively carries out poison 1080 baiting of ‘wild dogs’.

The baits are highly toxic and cause an excruciatingly slow and painful death.

I know someone who removes these baits when he sees them. He says they’re meant to be removed at the end of the program, but they’re often not. He says there is a whole group of pure dingoes with stumpy tails that live up around Mount Hotham. And he says, about two years ago, he saw a large alpine dingo emerge from the bush to sit in the sun across the creek down the hill from my house. He said it was mesmerising.

Dingo painting, Split Rock, Quinkan Country, Laura, North Queensland.

In May 2023, research found that around 90% of wild dogs in Victoria were in fact pure dingoes. Furthermore, the research showed that dingoes don’t commonly breed with domestic dogs.

By the end of the year, the State Government had announced a review into its Wild Dog Management Plan. It extended the dingo ‘unprotection order’ until 1 October 2024 to maintain the status quo while it investigated the situation, promising to consult with farmers.

But livestock farmers were beginning to get angsty. Dingoes are indeed a threat to their businesses and control methods, such as dingo exclusion fencing, are expensive. Consultations are yet to take place, and the results of the review are due in six months.

So it was a surprise when, without warning on 14 March, Premier Jacinta Allan announced an end to the dingo unprotection order in North-West Victoria and a $550,000 investment package to assist farmers in that region to adopt alternate non-lethal control methods.

The decision was made prior to the review due to the risk of extinction to the dingo population in that region of Victoria. Data from the Arthur Rylah Institute show that as few as 40 dingoes remain in the North-West.

Elsewhere in the State, the unprotection order remains in force, pending the review.

Livestock farmers haven’t taken the news well and don’t believe the investment will stretch far. I do feel for them; it is distressing to find your animals dead or dying after an attack, and I’ve seen it take an emotional toll on them. They are fearful of a rise in dingo numbers.

But the question must be asked, do we as a country accept that we drive yet another species into extinction to maintain a lower cost of doing business?

In the meantime, I keep listening, hoping to again hear the dingoes howls ring out across the valley on a crisp cool night and know that they are still here, that they have survived another year.

Things I’ve enjoyed reading on Substack this week

• The State of Culture, 2024—by Ted Gioia

  A few years ago I watched a documentary called The Social Dilemma, which exposed how social media companies are deliberately perusing addiction. Ted picks up from here and looks at how that is impacting art and entertainment. It’s an eye opener.

• GHOST Is a Great Example of How We Collectively Misremember Some Films—by Cole Haddon

  I’m a sucker for a Patrick Swayze movie, so I thoroughly enjoyed Cole’s essay on who the film’s main protagonists really are. Although it seems quite obvious when you think about it, it’s that pottery scene that sticks in your mind.

• Sorry I'm Late - a drunk Irishman asked me out—by Jess Pan

  Jess Pan is who you read when you feel like a little gossip over a cup of hot tea. She can always bring a smile to your face.

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