Royal Zoological Society of NSW 2019 Symposium
October 2019
Aboriginal Community Support Team
South East Local Land Services Aboriginal Community Support Officers, Dan Morgan and Noel Webster, recently attended The Royal Zoological Society of NSW’s symposium “The Dingo Dilemma: Cull, Contain or Conserve” held at the Taronga Institute of Science and Learning.
Both Dan and Noel attended to listen to the debate to better inform their understanding with wild dog management and the protection of cultural heritage values.
Within the South East, the dingo is highly significant to the local Yuin Aboriginal people. How this value is expressed and respected within wild dog management can become contentious and has the potential to hinder a collaborative effort to engage both the Aboriginal communities and land managers in the protection of cultural heritage and agricultural values.
Academic scholars took centre stage across the day presenting rigorous research on a wide range of dingo related topics.
While Aboriginal community representatives opened the program with a discussion on cultural perspectives and relationships to dingo species, Aboriginal representation across the rest of the program was limited.
For Aboriginal people, the cultural definition of what is a dingo is based on the physical attributes of the animal “what looks like a dingo is a dingo”. This point was echoed throughout the proceedings.
Results of 20 years’ worth of genetic compositions of dingos was presented with results suggesting that dingos that undertake ecological functions within the landscape have high purity of dingo genetics. This concept added to the physical resemblance of a dingo with behavioural traits, which suggest also “if it behaves like a dingo it is a dingo”.
Presentations inferred “a dog has nor the tools and capacity to undertake an ecological functional role and survive in a native habitat and the animal will decease”.
A dingo on the other hand will perform as an apex species, the removal of the dingo as a top order predator will see a trophic cascade within an ecosystem functionality.
Research across NSW concluded dingos have genetic diversity between north west populations and south east dingo species populations.
A representative from the NSW Department of Planning Industry and Environment presented the topic “how legislation facilities control and conservation of dingos”. This topic was focused on heavily in the plenary discussions.
A wide range of views on how to manage dingos and wild dogs was articulated to the audience. A primary producer and pest animal controller took the position that current control methods are ineffective called for increased control.
Two other landholders from the primary production industry do not undertake any control methods, instead, they have incorporated the dingo as a management tool with positive results. The dingo keeps in check native herbivorous species that reduces stress on native pastures. The dingo take up residence on the land holding and undertakes dingo lore and ecological functional roles.
The symposium provided an account on the species behaviour, ecology, impacts and management according to scientific and scholarly evidence, revealing the factual identity of the dingo beneath the contesting stereotypes.
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