Across Australia, dingo populations are managed to reduce their impact on key industries such as farming and to manage public safety. Dingo management often involves near entire removal or exclusion of dingoes from large areas of the landscape. Such widespread and broadscale suppression of Australia’s apex terrestrial predator is likely to have profound ecological and cultural implications.
In the eastern Myall Lakes, dingo management is conducted by project partners and private landowners, to manage the risk of dingo interactions with people, while allowing dingoes to perform their ecosystem roles as a top-order predator.
The MLDP provides scientific evidence and input in identifying problematic behaviours in dingoes and in people. Interactions between people and dingoes sometimes result in the removal of dingoes that display problematic behaviour, and avoiding this requires both human and dingo-focused interventions.
A major focus of the MLDP, is investigating and developing non-lethal management interventions. Through a deeper understanding of dingo ecology and behaviour, novel tools can be developed and tested to improve coexistence between people and dingoes, reducing reliance on broadscale exclusion and lethal control.
Through long-term monitoring of individual dingoes, their families and their fates, the MLDP contributes to delivering evidence-based, culturally-sensitive, ecologically-focused management of dingoes.
