Dingoes are endangered. :(

After my sister went to Australia, she told me that the tour guide told her there are no pure dingoes in the mainland. They have all been contaminated by domestic dog blood. The only pure dingoes who are not part dog are on Frazer Island. I just saw a documentary on them on National Geographic Wild's station that said there are only 120 pure dingoes left in the wild and because there are two known fatal attacks of humans by dingoes, both which happened on Frazer island, one of a 9-year Australian boy and the other of a 46 year old English tourist, the officials on Frazer Island are required to kill any dingo that a tourist claims to be aggressive, even though the dingo population is already severely low.


[quote]How can our politicians condemn whaling and yet condone the Arial baiting drops of 1080 in the Kosciusko National Park where the last bastion of approximately 100 Pure Alpine dingoes live in the world?[/quote]

Full info on dingo perils and conservation:

http://www.wadingo.com/

and more info here:

http://www.dingodiscovery.net/future.html


[quote]The pure dingo in the wild is doomed — according to Dr. L. Corbett, who predicts that 2010 will see their end.[/quote]

[quote]The world is surging to save it's crucially important predators from extinction — yet “extermination” remains the only choice on the menu for Australia's diminutive carnivore. 1080 poison — banned as eco-toxic elsewhere, and its successor, is air dropped in our national parks, steel jawed traps still the order of the day in Queensland, shooting, and deliberate disease spread are practised widely.

To put a stop to this ONLY the politicians have the power. The dingo MUST be urgently removed from vermin and pest animal lists. Please write to your local member and beg or demand that this happen. Scientists cried the warnings for the Thylacine, just as they are doing for the dingo. Politicians did not listen then —[/quote]

The ones on Frazer Island have never bred with domestic dogs since it's illegal for people to bring their pet dogs to Frazer island and there is also no livestock industry allowed on Frazer Island. It's the last reserve for pure dingoes.Someone won't say that a wolfdog is a gray wolf just because it has wolf-blood in it. A wolfdog is a dog and if all gray wolves went extinct, wolfdogs would not be considered wolves. The same is true of dingoes. A dingo that is crossed with a dog is not a dingo. It would be something like a dingo-dog, like a wolf crossed with a dog is wolfdog and not a wolf. Also, I looked up the dingoes official scientic status and it was vunerable, meaning they are in the lowest range of being endangered. They are not as endangered as say the red wolves or ethiopian wolves, which are critically endangered,but they are endangered or atleast very close to being endangered. See here:

http://www.canids.org/species/Canis_lupus_dingo.htm

There are some pure northern dingos in NT. I used to live in Darwin and there was a big beautiful boy on the army base up there, and he had a few different girlfriends from time to time (only ever seemed to see them when they were heavily pregnant, which for dingos only happens annually, unlike dogs). He was always just chillin at the gates, but was so skinny. Pure Alpine dingos are harder to come by because they live closer to pastoral land where farmers raise sheep (they are generally lighter with longer fluffier coats).

One of my dogs is part dingo, i picked her up at the animal shelter in Darwin. She has the most beautiful temperament but it took us ages to bond with her. If anyone is thinking about getting a dingo or part-dingo, they need to be aware they are generally a one family dog and don't handle rehoming or boarding well (as we discovered at the start of the year re: Boarding, although I think having our other dog with her kept her slightly calmer than she would have been alone), and similar to a wolf hybrid needs lots of long walks. They are happiest when they are roaming, so containing them can be difficult, and they MUST MUST MUST be properly socialised. Before I got my girl she wasn't, and I'm so glad I refused to let her off lead until I was sure she was ok, as she never reacted well to small dogs. It took months and months of rehabilitation with the assistance of random small dog owners at the beaches and parks of Darwin to break her of her habit of seeing small dogs as prey, and instead have her seeing them as a potential source of not so rough play.

I absolutely love dingos and I agree, it would be terrible to lose them, but with such a small gene pool existing in the wild, theres a chance we are beyond the point of no return without the intervention of captive breeding.