RESEARCHER who claims dingoes are being persecuted by 1080 was part of a group awarded a prestigious science prize recently.
Five dingo researchers won the $10,000 Eureka prize for environmental research, sponsored by the NSW Government on September 3.
Their research found dingoes could improve biodiversity by controlling kangaroos and suppressing foxes and feral cats which protected threatened species and helped in the recovery of degraded lands.
The team led by University of Tasmania's Chris Johnson included University of New South Wales' Michael Letnic, Deakin University's Euan Ritchie, Arian Wallach of James Cook University and Adam O'Neill.
Dr Wallach is based at Evelyn Downs Station near Coober Pedy in South Australia and said dingos were not vermin but acted as a lynchpin in the environment.
"Dingoes are currently persecuted across Australia, mostly with the use of 1080 poison, with catastrophic consequences for biodiversity," Dr Wallach said.
"Dingoes now occupy the top predator role once filled by the Tasmanian tiger . . . they have become a lynchpin of the ecosystem, important to the health of other animals and plants."
Dr Wallach also said the hybridisation of the dingo in areas like Victoria, was no reason to kill them off and she also disliked the use of the term 'wild dog'.
"Calling a dingo a wild dog is a euphemism, it makes it easier to kill them."
Two dingo advocate groups used the award to attack research body Invasive Animal CRC.
The National Dingo Preservation Recovery Program and the Dingo Care Network claimed Invasive Animal CRC shouldn't be involved in wild dog research as it's funded by "powerful pastoral industry stakeholders".
"No public money should be given over to the IACRC for dingo-related research," a joint statement from the two groups said.
The IACRC is jointly-funded by all three levels of government, universities and plus Australian Wool Innovation and Meat and Livestock Australia.
Invasive Animals CRC wild canid leader Peter Fleming said the agricultural groups had a right to fund the organisation because they were affected by feral pests.
He praised the researchers for raising the profile of dingoes, but said it was correlative research rather than experiment-based so results could be less reliable.
"Correlation doesn't tell you what causes things," Dr Fleming said.
"So what they've done is good work to support the hypothesis, and from there they should test it with an experiment.
"The reason why I question some of the (Eureka-winning) research is in Armidale (NSW) they have been aerial baiting since 1965 . . . yet the dogs are still there.
"And they aren't doing a good job in supressing the cats and foxes."
And Dr Fleming questioned the narrow scope of the research, conducted mainly in outback rangeland areas.
"The one thing they haven't dealt with is the social (effect of dingoes) and economic impact, they have only looked at the ecological component and mainly for arid areas," Dr Fleming said.
He said IACRC had just started a holistic long-term wild dog research program dubbed the predators, prey, plants and people project at the University of New England in NSW.
"We are going to look at it much more broadly (at the issue) to include community attitudes, and how they think about dingoes and wild dogs and its control, because this affects what people can do on the ground," he said.
http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2013/09/18/583613_national-news.html
Don't poison Dingos
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