Australia’s ‘Wild Dog’ Problem: 99 Percent Comprises Dingoes

A new study has suggested that the vast majority of animals in Australia considered as 'wild dogs' are actually dingoes or canines, mostly in terms of their genetic composition.

According to ScienceAlert, researchers collected the results from DNA tests of more than 5,000 wild canids throughout Australia. They discovered that only around one percent were, in fact, feral dogs or dog-dominant hybrids.

According to Kylie Cairns, a University of New South Wales conservation biologist, there's no feral dog problem in the country.

They just are not established in the wild, elaborated the conservation biologist, adding that there are rare times when when "a dog might go bush," although it is not adding substantially to the dingo population.

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Mostly Canines and Dingoes

Out of more than 5,000 samples examined in the study, about 33.7 percent were found to be pure dingoes. Meanwhile, 30.4 percent were found to be probable dingoes, and 34.7 percent were canids that have a higher than 50- to 60 percentage of dingo ancestry.

Meaning, the term 'wild dogs' nearly totally misrepresents the fact about what these animals actually are. And it is not just an issue in semantics.

An earlier study has presented that most Australians are in general not aware that 'wild dogs' management policies in the country like baiting and culling, also target dingoes on top of feral dogs of domesticated, modern lineage, and possibly due to the fact that ambiguous terminology is effectively rendering dingoes invisible.

As apex slayers, dingoes are playing a vital role in Australia's environment when allowed to do so. Eliminating them from the landscape has seen native grasslands giving way to what's described as an overabundance of problematic woody shrubs, enabled feral cats and foxes to gobble endangered marsupials unchecked, and then had the sand dunes' shapes changed.

Native Australian Animals

According to Cairns, the term 'wild dog' is not considered scientific but a euphemism, instead. The conservation biologist added that dingoes are a "native Australian animal," and many people do not like the notion of using lethal control on native animals.

The results, partly funded by dingo conservation bodies, also reportedly challenge the perception that dingo, the apex terrestrial predator of Australia, is turning out to be extinct in the wild.

While hybridization is certainly taking place in Australia, interbreeding between dogs and dingoes is accounting for just a minority of wild canids, with the majority of the dog introgression evident in the country's southeastern parts.

As indicated in the report, the reasons for such could be two-fold, reflecting both the historical impacts of European settlement in the region, allowing for a longer time for dog genes to mix within the populations of the dingo, although the effects of wild dog management policies in Australian states including Victoria, New South Wales, and southern Queensland.

'Lethal Control' Measures

In their paper, the study investigators wrote the widespread occurrence of rigorous lethal control, specifically aerial baiting, may raise the possibility of "dingo × dog hybridization" by breaking dingo social structures.

While findings of the study reported in Australian Mammalogy show the dingo is certainly holding on in Australia amidst all these pressures, particularly in parts of the country that utilize less lethal control measures, the study authors said there is a need to talk about this native animal in plain and simple terms, not using the indirect 'wild dogs' term that conceals the truth, not to mention the extent of lethal dingo management policies.

Earlier research has presented that the term 'wild dogs' s favored by studies financially backed by the livestock industry, reportedly a biased language that's preventing people from essential discussions on dingo conservation.

Information about dingoes is shown on D is for Dingo's YouTube video below: