VIDEO: Are dingoes precious native wildlife, or a pest to be controlled?

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE, REPORTER:  It’s an iconic native animal often talked about but rarely seen.

MELINDA BROWNING, AUSTRALIAN DINGO FOUNDATION:  Dingoes are very wary of humans - aloof, independent, but curious and intelligent. Very elusive, yeah.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  This footage, commissioned by the Dingo Foundation, gives a glimpse of the species in the wild.

MELINDA BROWNING:  How can we get the public to feel any compassion or empathy for this beautiful, unique population of dingoes when they can't see them? 

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  These dingoes in the Big Desert, on the border of Victoria and South Australia, are on the brink of extinction.

Genetic testing shows they are pure dingoes, with dangerous levels of in-breeding and the Victorian Government says there are as few as 40 left. 

Yet until a few months ago, it was legal to kill them to protect livestock. 

MELINDA BROWNING:  To know that we have this special population on the brink of extinction, that has been driven to the brink of extinction by our actions as humans, is heartbreaking.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  In March, the state government banned the killing of dingoes in the Big Desert region.

The agriculture and environment ministers declined 7.30’s request for an interview about that decision but said it was made to save the pack from extinction.

It’s the first time the species has been protected across both public land and private property in Australia.   

MELINDA BROWNING:  To say we were elated was an understatement. We were crying into our champagne and dancing around the lounge rooms.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  But in rural Victorian towns, built on the back of sheep farming, the reception has been very different. 

Alan Bennett’s property borders the Big Desert.

ALAN BENNETT, FARMER:  Kangaroos and emus impact the fences, and then the dogs come through the fences.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Just before the law changed, Alan’s daughter found five dead sheep in a paddock.

ALAN BENNETT:  These are photos of some of the wounds when the sheep came in. 

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  So it’s not a quick death for the sheep? 

ALAN BENNETT:  No, they just basically just get eaten alive.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Since the time of filming, the attacks have continued. 7.30 has seen images of 13 dead sheep including one lamb. 

Alan estimates the total loss is closer to 50 animals in three months. 

ALAN BENNETT:  The wild dogs are what do it. We know that, we see their tracks coming out of the park. 

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Alan applied for a permit to kill the predator as required under the new law.

The state environment department rejected the request claiming the removal of even one dingo could threaten the population’s survival.

ALAN BENNETT:  The state government haven't moved the goalposts – they've just ripped the goalposts off the oval.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  The state government has allocated about half a million dollars to help farmers find other ways to protect their sheep such as building exclusion fences like this one, which is taller and stronger than regular fences.

The problem is this stuff is expensive and Alan reckons it’d cost about half a million just to fence his property. 

ALAN BENNETT:  If the state government wants to protect the wild, I'll still call them wild dogs, if the state government wants to protect the wild dogs in the Big Desert, that's fine with me too. But we shouldn't be asked to bear the full cost of that decision - unassisted, unaided, unsupported.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Two years ago, 7.30 obtained covert footage from a wildlife protection group exposing the confronting reality of dingo trapping in Victoria.   

Outside of the Big Desert, trapping, shooting and poison baiting remains legal on or near farmland in Victoria.

Similar control programs operate, to varying degrees across Australia but controversially in some states there are different laws for dingoes, classed as protected native wildlife in national parks, and wild dogs which are considered invasive pests.

DR KYLIE CAIRNS, UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES:  And so there's that wiggle room where dingoes might be protected in you know, face value, but wild dog control is killing them.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  It was widely believed that after colonisation, dingoes began breeding with domestic dogs - creating new hybrids called wild dogs but a landmark study last year upended that theory.

KYLIE CAIRNS:  The genetic evidence suggests that largely dingoes and dogs don't reproduce together.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Conservation geneticist Kylie Cairns tested the DNA of around 300 wild animals from across Australia to analyse dingo/dog ancestry.

The study was partly funded by the Dingo Foundation. 

KYLIE CAIRNS:  Previous studies across Australia used a testing method that was developed in the 1990s, and it looked at 23 DNA markers - compared to my method, which looks at 195,000.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Nationally, 85 per cent of the animals tested were pure dingoes with no, or very little, dog ancestry. 

In Victoria, nine out of 10 animals had no dog ancestry at all. 

KYLIE CAIRNS:  It's really brought to the forefront the fact that the animal that we're killing with lethal control is a native animal and they should be managed as a native animal across all states in Australia.

MELINDA BROWNING:  We now have protection for our sharks in the ocean, our crocodiles in our estuaries, our eagles in the sky, and not for our dingoes on the land. 

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  The findings have prompted the Victorian Government to review its lethal control programs with a decision due in October. 

The Australian Capital Territory is also updating its policies to manage dingoes as a native species rather than a pest – though it will still allow lethal control in some areas. 

GREG MIFSUD, NATIONAL WILD DOG ACTION PLAN:  We're not trying to eradicate dingoes or wild dogs from the continent. We're just trying to manage their numbers and populations so that there's less that cause problems.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Greg Mifsud co-ordinates the National Wild Dog Action Plan.

GREG MIFSUD:  From a management perspective, they both cause the impacts, it really doesn't matter whether it's a dingo or a wild dog.

SONYA TAKAU, DINGO ADVISORY COUNCIL:  Dingoes are known by many names across Australia - whangarei, wilka, warragul, garingali. The dingo is deeply sacred to First Nations people. They are family. 

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Across Australia, there are growing calls to rethink how we manage dingoes and some of the loudest voices are Traditional Owners.

Last year, 20 First Nations groups signed this declaration.

SONYA TAKAU:  We do not, and have never, approved the killing of dingoes. We demand an immediate stop to this management across Australia.

I believe that we have never been included in the decision-making processes with dingo management in this country, and that is why I want to be sitting at the table. 

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Dingo advocate Sonya Takau is part of a new advisory body helping farmers find different ways to protect their livestock.

SONYA TAKAU:  I can see the momentum growing. It's not going to happen overnight. 

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Today, she’s meeting the owners of Badjuballa Station in Far North Queensland’s cattle country in the shadow of Dingo Mountain.

CHRISTOPER KENNEDY, BADJUBALLA ABORIGINAL CORPORATOIN:  They were more of a protection to us, and they really safeguarded us, you know, out here on country.

JOSHUA HENRY, BADJUBALLA ABORIGINAL CORPORATION:  I knew they was always part of our Indigenous heritage growing up but when we own places like this, we always seen they was a threat, really, to the cattle.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Traditional owner Joshua Henry has cultural ties to the dingo but for decades the grazier has killed them as required by Queensland law.

JOSHUA HENRY:  I'm not going to lie, you know, we used to bait heavily to kill the dingoes.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Four years ago, a conversation with Sonya, his aunty, started to change his perspective.

JOSHUA HENRY:  We have to protect them. I never, ever thought I'd say that, but it's something we have to do as Indigenous people. 

We have to figure out how we can do it.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  One option is training guardian animals like donkeys, Maremma dogs or alpacas to guard the cattle.

SONYA TAKAU:  One lady down in Mackay got donkeys. She reckons she had no predation. 

JOSHUA HENRY:  Yeah? 

SONYA TAKAU:  And I think they’d be good for here, you know?

GREG MIFSUD:  Non-lethal control tools are very specific and work really well in some situations and have limited capacity in others.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Greg Mifsud says a blanket ban on lethal control is not feasible. 

GREG MIFSUD:  I'm happy to work in areas where there's an attitude to not do lethal control, but I don't think it's realistically nationwide a possibility.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  Queensland has no plans to change its policy and it remains to be seen how the station’s new approach will be received.

But its owners are determined.

CHRISTOPER KENNEDY:  I think it's important because it's bringing back the way of life, how it used to be before colonisation.

ELLA ARCHIBALD-BINGE:  The wheels of change might be slowly turning but much of the country remains deeply divided over whether dingoes are precious wildlife, or a pest to be controlled.

ALAN BENNETT:  Farming is all about finding solutions to problems and yet I reckon this one with the wild dogs is probably one of the hardest things I reckon I've had to try and deal with in my farming career.

SONYA TAKAU:  I couldn't imagine what farmers are feeling. 

Let's get behind them, support them and the government fund them to trial these non-lethal alternatives. 

If this works, then it means it'll roll out across Australia. It has to.