Melinda Browning, director of the Australian Dingo Foundation, said the decision could send alpine dingoes on to an \u201cextinction trajectory\u201d. She said at least 468 dingoes were trapped and shot by government controllers last year out of an estimated population of 2,640 to 8,800 animals in eastern Victoria.<\/p>\n
She questioned the justification for the decision, given livestock losses were \u201cminuscule\u201d (estimated at 0.009% of the sheep population), but said dingo protection advocates were mostly shut out of the government\u2019s 12-month review leading up to the decision.<\/p>\n
The extension of unprotection orders on private land and adjacent public land within 3km across eastern Victoria was welcomed by the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF), which called it \u201ca common sense move\u201d.<\/p>\n The president of VFF, Emma Germano, said the move provided greater certainty regarding control measures for farmers in eastern Victoria, although those in the north-west were \u201cstill exposed to the horrors inflicted\u201d and hoping to \u201creach a workable solution\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe stories I\u2019ve been hearing from local farmers in that area [are] tragic,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But farmers and the agricultural industry were also unhappy with the process. Germano said while farmers and the agricultural industry had managed to have their say after \u201csustained advocacy\u201d, a clearer process and timeframes could have avoided \u201cmuch angst and worry\u201d.<\/p>\n The Taungurung Land and Waters Council, traditional owners for Country covering much of central Victoria, were \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d by the government\u2019s support for the continued killing of dingo, known as yirrangan in Taungurung language.<\/p>\n \u201cYirrangan and Taungurung people have coexisted harmoniously for millennia, and share the same story; driven from Country, managed, and at times murdered according to colonial views,\u201d a statement from the council said.<\/p>\n Matthew Shanks, Taungurung council\u2019s executive manager of biocultural landscapes, said yirrangan were vital to the health and future of Taungurung Country. The council called on the state government to \u201cimmediately lift the unprotection order across all of Victoria\u201d, a position shared by more than 20 First Nations groups around Australia.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Victoria\u2019s environment department said it was \u201cstriking the right balance\u201d between protecting vulnerable dingo populations and giving farmers the ability to protect livestock, and was providing an additional $2m investment into nonlethal dingo controls and population research.<\/p>\n Prof Euan Ritchie, a Deakin University ecologist who has been researching dingoes since 2008, said the decision raised questions about the long-term survival of the culturally and ecologically significant species in Victoria.<\/p>\n \u201cAside from people, they\u2019re the only large, land-based predator that we have. They can help control numbers of things like feral goats, kangaroos, feral pigs, and there\u2019s some evidence they can control cat and fox populations as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Not only was Victoria\u2019s north-west dingo population \u201churtling towards extinction\u201d, but Ritchie said there was evidence of declining numbers and genetic diversity in the rest of the state.<\/p>\n Instead of a \u201cbackwards and forwards debate\u201d there were ways to bring people together, he said, but this required better engagement with groups such as traditional owners, \u201cevidence-based policy\u201d and solutions such as fencing and guardian animals that could protect livestock while maintaining dingoes in the landscape.<\/p>\n