Post by Aussienot on Nov 5, 2005 22:14:25 GMT -5
A new program hopes to save Australia's rapidly dying dingo population through artificial insemination of the pure-bred dogs. Monash University-based research group the Norwood Animal Conservation Group and the Dingo Care Network are launching the Dingo Species Recovery Program in Melbourne, to try and save the animal from extinction.
Under the program, the groups will collect and freeze sperm and ovaries from pure-bred dingoes at zoos and wildlife sanctuaries across Australia.They then hope to use the samples to inseminate pure-bred female dingoes and breed the species.
However, organisers are still seeking $10,000 from any group or individual to begin the artificial insemination phase of the program, which they hope to start in the next six to 12 months.
Dingo Care Network secretary Ernest Healy said dingoes cross-breeding with other wild dogs, as well as government-sponsored baiting and trapping programs, threatened the animal with extinction in the wild within the next 20 years.
"So far as the pure dingo goes, there are very few left in the natural environment," Dr Healy said.
"Government and state sponsored wild dog poisoning programs are completely indiscriminate about what they kill.
"They're just focused on what they see as wild dogs and that can potentially cover everything from foxes through to the small remaining pockets of pure dingoes."
Dr Healy said governments and farmers "continued to persecute" the dogs and had exaggerated their propensity to kill livestock.
He said while dingoes helped balance populations of native animals such as kangaroos and wallabies, they did not normally prey on farming livestock and were "naturally shy" of humans.
"They will, under duress, if there's been a bushfire through, or lack of normal diet, they will resort to killing sheep, but that is not their preferred diet," Dr Healy said.
Victorian Farmers Federation president Simon Ramsay said pure-bred dingoes were not as aggressive or as great a threat to livestock as those which were half bred with other breeds of wild dogs.
He said dog hunters did not indiscriminately kill dogs en masse, but targeted the dogs that were actually doing the damage.
"We are losing a lot of stock," Mr Ramsay said.
"It's wrong to suggest half breed dogs are not killing a lot of stock, they're actually getting rid of industries.
"There's no sheep left in large tracts or areas in Victoria's alpine interface around Omeo and Tallangatta, where there used to be large sheep populations. Now there's hardly any, in fact people are not running sheep in that area purely because of dog attacks."
Dingo Species Recovery Program director Shae-Lee Cox said it was hoped 50 to 100 dingoes would be bred over the next five to 10 years through the program. She said the bred dingoes would be kept in captivity, with the longer term aim of being able to release them into the wild if there was a change in government approaches to protecting the species.
But she said it was more likely that the species would become extinct in the Australian wild and that dingoes bred under the program would only live in protected sanctuaries.
"That's what most people seem to think will happen," Dr Cox said.
"The outlook is pretty grim. It's sad because they are a native dog and this is the land they inhabited before European settlement came along."
© 2005 AAP
from The Sydney Morning Herald 30 October 2004
Under the program, the groups will collect and freeze sperm and ovaries from pure-bred dingoes at zoos and wildlife sanctuaries across Australia.They then hope to use the samples to inseminate pure-bred female dingoes and breed the species.
However, organisers are still seeking $10,000 from any group or individual to begin the artificial insemination phase of the program, which they hope to start in the next six to 12 months.
Dingo Care Network secretary Ernest Healy said dingoes cross-breeding with other wild dogs, as well as government-sponsored baiting and trapping programs, threatened the animal with extinction in the wild within the next 20 years.
"So far as the pure dingo goes, there are very few left in the natural environment," Dr Healy said.
"Government and state sponsored wild dog poisoning programs are completely indiscriminate about what they kill.
"They're just focused on what they see as wild dogs and that can potentially cover everything from foxes through to the small remaining pockets of pure dingoes."
Dr Healy said governments and farmers "continued to persecute" the dogs and had exaggerated their propensity to kill livestock.
He said while dingoes helped balance populations of native animals such as kangaroos and wallabies, they did not normally prey on farming livestock and were "naturally shy" of humans.
"They will, under duress, if there's been a bushfire through, or lack of normal diet, they will resort to killing sheep, but that is not their preferred diet," Dr Healy said.
Victorian Farmers Federation president Simon Ramsay said pure-bred dingoes were not as aggressive or as great a threat to livestock as those which were half bred with other breeds of wild dogs.
He said dog hunters did not indiscriminately kill dogs en masse, but targeted the dogs that were actually doing the damage.
"We are losing a lot of stock," Mr Ramsay said.
"It's wrong to suggest half breed dogs are not killing a lot of stock, they're actually getting rid of industries.
"There's no sheep left in large tracts or areas in Victoria's alpine interface around Omeo and Tallangatta, where there used to be large sheep populations. Now there's hardly any, in fact people are not running sheep in that area purely because of dog attacks."
Dingo Species Recovery Program director Shae-Lee Cox said it was hoped 50 to 100 dingoes would be bred over the next five to 10 years through the program. She said the bred dingoes would be kept in captivity, with the longer term aim of being able to release them into the wild if there was a change in government approaches to protecting the species.
But she said it was more likely that the species would become extinct in the Australian wild and that dingoes bred under the program would only live in protected sanctuaries.
"That's what most people seem to think will happen," Dr Cox said.
"The outlook is pretty grim. It's sad because they are a native dog and this is the land they inhabited before European settlement came along."
© 2005 AAP
from The Sydney Morning Herald 30 October 2004