Saving the dingo must happen!

Australia, over the last two hundred years has been credited with the extinction of eighteen mammals, nearly half of all the mammals in the world that became extinct during this time.

Let’s not make it nineteen with the dingo being its newest member. In every country the family of canids have been persecuted because they may encroach on agricultural activities. In fact myths have been made to support the farming interests. Since Bram Stoker wrote his novel in 1897 about Dracula, a new dimension has been added to the myths like one about the Antarctica wolf (Dusicyon australis) which is closer to the fox than a wolf and came down to greet Charles Darwin on the beach during his voyage to the Falkland islands but when the Scottish settlers established a sheep industry on these Islands, the myth was started on how this wolf would only feed on the blood of it’s victims (the farmer’s sheep).

You may laugh at this myth and say it wouldn’t happen here in Australia, well think again, it did happen here and now this creature is extinct as well. The Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) was credited with doing the same bizarre feeding habit of drinking the blood of the farmer’s sheep; this myth even lasted into the mid twentieth century with a well known Australian naturalist writing in a book which was published quoting this bizarre behaviour.

To save the dingo we need well document facts, not myths, on how they and the environment have a symbiotic relationship. For most of the dingoes written history scientists who have documented the dingo have done so because they are paid to find better ways of eradicating them, so these scientist have had tinted eyes when looking at the dingo, what is needed is complete independent research focused on all the facts and not just which is on the farmers side of the fence.