In general conservation groups are an essential part of the fabric of the Australian community. They are needed to right the wrongs of many greedy business people who put profit before the environment.

Without these groups Australia would be a different country with little biodiversity but when it comes to long term survival of the dingo many of these groups don’t care if the dingo survives as a species.

In a recent communication with a well known group which receives funding from people generously donating their hard earned money, replied to us here with quotes like… “consider it to be an introduced pest like the European red fox”… “extinction of the Tasmanian tiger”… “dingo's are responsible for impacts on many threatened species, including the spot-tailed quoll, malleefowl, brush-tailed bettong, bush-stone curlew, eastern barred bandicoot and long-footed potoroo, just to name a few”.

These groups along with many other people in this country often get confused when they quote statements like those above. The dingo has lived in harmony with its environment, adapting to its needs for over five thousand years.

The problem is not the pure bred dingo but what was brought here by the Europeans and others, the common dog. The dog easily cross-breeds with the dingo changing its genetics, like its breeding pattern. The pure dingo will only breed once a year and only one litter to a family group whereas the dog hybrid dingo will breed twice a year and has more litters to the group, thus straining the environment.

Conservation groups need to recognise these distinctions and help save the pure dingo.

There are a couple of groups of dedicated people which are doing this now; one group is researching freezing genetic samples to preserve the species for the future but this could be in vain if there is no environment to release the dingo back into. This is where the conservation groups should be working at having an environment that has all levels of the food chain working from the top order predator to the smallest invertebrate and not what they are doing now, only protecting the cute and cuddly ones.