AUSTRALIAS IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOUR

AUSTRALIA'S SPECTACULAR AND IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOUR!

It was as I was leaving Perth and heading back to Adelaide on the 24th May, that I sat in the airport and wearily picked up the paper only to be confronted with a story about the evils of the dingo and how it was wreaking havoc on the sheep industry. Upon reading, it soon became very apparent that this article was very one sided, and FULL of inaccuracies... a perfect example of lazy and bad journalism.

But then yesterday May 28th, it became clear that this story was obviously a prelude to get the public onside when the public announcement, in the form of an advert in the same paper, was made that Western Australia was now going to go ahead with 1080 baiting throughout 3.6 million hectares of conservation land!! This will be happening through June and July.

For those that haven't caught up with the horrors of this poison... then please read my back on my blog page further and PLEASE PLEASE watch the video on it.

Photo Courtesy Lyn Watson

The following is the advert. In 'red' is Nic Papalia's (President of the WA Dingo Association) responses to each point made.

The West Australian Wednesday May 28 page 50.

The WA State Govt has advertised in the West Australian

'Department of Environment and Conservation' - Western Shield Wildlife Recovery will bait 3.6 million hectares of conservation lands throughout the state in June and July with dried meat balls containing a 'naturally' occurring toxin ( 1080)
There is nothing natural about super toxin 1080 - which is made by man in a laboratory where the sense of taste and smell is removed and the toxin levels magnified
All aerial and ground baited areas are sign posted.
Although there is NO way of containing the poison in one spot because of raptors and animals moving the baits and dead corpses that litter the landscape! The Health Minister should have enough 'spine and backbone' to publicly condemn this atrocity.
1080 is banned in almost all countries in the world for good reason. Australia and New Zealand have a catastrophic use of the super toxin and this poison has NO antidote! 1080 is INHUMANE in the way it kills taking anything from 4 – 22 hours of agony before death occurs!

Attention : these baits will kill domestic dogs and cats.
These baits work on metabolism and kill everything. Dingoes are the top land predator and where the Australian 'Lion King' has been exterminated through ignorance, there is massive problems created with wild pig, fox, cat and goat along with an alarming over population of kangaroo numbers which is catastrophic for the environment and creates defoliation of our continent. This problem is ongoing and through these actions of foolish behaviour by the Environment and Conservation Department a complete breakdown of our environment and ecology is happening. Thorough ignorance and misrepresentation of the facts with disinformation that is totally wrong! If the dingo is left to do the job it does so well, the smaller animals and birds on the verge of extinction increase in population because the cats and fox numbers dwindle and are kept in toe. There is plenty of literature on this topic. The dingo is canis lupis dingo, Australia's very own wolf. Wolves have been reintroduced in the USA and for the first time in more than 70 years Aspen trees are again growing in Yosemite due to the deer numbers being controlled and kept in balance by the wolf. This commonsense has led the Mexican and Finnish governments to reintroduce the wolf in their lands to keep the balance also. Our government should be listening to the advice and science that is prevalent on this topic. The reason our governmental departments in this country and New Zealand continue to use 1080 is because this product is a massive INDUSTRY

Through baiting the department of Environment and Conservation can continue to control the threat of foxes and bring back native animals
( DINGOES are by ALL definitions an Australian Native Animal and the most important of all in the job of keeping the balance and equilibrium as the 'Bush Cop') from the brink of extinction Significantly helping the western barred bandicoot
It amazes me, that these people don't have to be appearing accountable to and for anyone!! They don't listen to facts, science and commonsense and appear to have their own agenda !
All those dingoes will die! :( along with many other birds and animals that are killed through secondary poisoning! If a bait is dropped into your backyard by a hawk or eagle then your pet or child will die if 1080 is swallowed!



SO PLEASE SCREAM AS LOUD AS YOU CAN... AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN!!! And try and stop this criminal act. It takes just a couple of minutes of your time to email one of the Ministers listed below. That couple of minutes could be the difference between loosing more of our dingoes in excruciating pain. Let's get this inhumane poison banned once and for all!!

Please have the courage to defend Australia's endangered native wolf before it is too late!

Voice your opinion in the media and contact the federal and state ministers for the environment, demanding

that our endangered dingo be removed from the vermin list and listed s a protected native species instead and get 1080 banned and off our shores.

Mr Peter Garrett - Federal Minister of Environment

Address: PO Box 249, Maroubra NSW 2035

Phone: (02) 6277 7640

Fax: (02) 6273 6101

Email: Peter.Garrett.MP@aph.gov.au

Mr David Templeman - WA Minister of Environment

Address: 29th Floor, Allendale Square, 77 St Georges

Terrace, Perth WA 6000

Phone: (08) 9220 5050

Fax: (08) 9221 4665

Email: david-templeman@dpc.wa.gov.au

Mr Gavin Jennings - Victorian Minister of Environment

Address: Level 22, 50 Lonsdale St, Melbourne VIC 3002

Phone: (03) 9096 8830

Fax: (03) 9096 8866

Email: gavin.jennings@parliament.vic.gov.au

Mr Philip Koperberg - NSW Minister of Environment

Address: PO Box A290, Sydney South NSW 1232

Phone: 9995 6750

Fax: 9995 6654

Email: office@koperberg.minister.nsw.gov.au

DINGOES TOUTED AS WILDLIFE SAVIOURS

DINGOES TOUTED AS WILDLIFE'S SAVIOUR

Dani Cooper

ABC Science Online

Dingoes should be reintroduced into large tracts of Australian sheep grazing country to control feral animals that would otherwise threaten native fauna, a wildlife expert says.

Professor Chris Dickman, of the Institute of Wildlife Research at the University of Sydney, also says it may be time to consider pulling down the dingo fence that was built in the 1880s to keep dingoes from livestock in southeast Australia.

He says Australians, particularly the livestock farming community, need to rethink their attitude towards the country's native dog.

In a range of papers to be presented this week at the Biodiversity Extinction Crisis Conference in Sydney, Dickman and his colleagues argue the dingo is critical to saving threatened native species and restoring biodiversity in areas that have been devastated by drought and sheep farming.

Dickman says Australia has the world's highest rate of mammal extinction with 27 species and sub-species lost since European settlement in 1788, 'which is as much as the rest of the world combined in the same period'.

Research shows two introduced predators, the red fox and feral cat, are the main cause of many extinctions and reductions in mammal species and that dingoes keep down their numbers.

'Where dingoes occur in big numbers, cats and foxes don't,' Dickman says.

His study of the 325,000 square kilometre rangeland region of western New South Wales (NSW) shows 72 native species have been lost and 40% of the original marsupial population has disappeared from the area he describes as a 'conservation wasteland'.

Threatened

He says the reintroduction of the dingo, tied with sympathetic management practices, could help save 21 nationally or regionally threatened species of native mammals in the area.

'Such management should begin in national parks and private conservation areas and supplant sheep flocks in areas where these are now ecologically and economically unsustainable,' he says.

Those areas include western NSW, parts of Central Queensland and the southwest corner of Western Australia.

He has targeted Sturt National Park in the far-western corner of NSW as the site to begin the scheme.

Dickman says rural communities need to be encouraged to allow the dingo, Australia's largest land predator, into livestock farming areas.

In the US, he says, there are programs that help sheep and predators such as grey wolves and coyotes co-exist.

Donkeys stand guard

These include schemes to compensate farmers for killed livestock and the use of guard animals such as donkeys and alpacas that attack predators when they approach sheep.

'These schemes have worked elsewhere, we just haven't been brave enough to raise them,' Dickman says.

The ecologist has another Australian icon in his sights, suggesting it is time to debate the future of the dingo fence, which stretches 5400 kilometres across the continent from Western Australia to Queensland.

The dingo fence is a 'disaster from a biological point of view', Dickman says because of the increase in fox and cat numbers and decrease in small mammal numbers in areas where the dingoes are locked out of.

But he concedes it 'won't come down any time soon'.

'At the moment you've got a bunch of scientists saying the dingo is great ... but we know the idea is going to get nowhere unless we engage much more forcefully with the agricultural community,' he says.

Dingoes to the rescue of threatened species

From The Australian

By Leigh Dayton
July 11, 2007 12:00am

IT won't get the thumbs up in the paddock but a leading ecologist says it's time to reintroduce dingoes to national parks, conservation areas and even rangelands.

Based on research in a 325,000sq km rangeland region of New South Wales, Chris Dickman of the University of Sydney claims Canis lupus dingo could help protect 21 nationally or regionally threatened species of native animals living in the semi-arid heartland of Australia.

'It's fair to say it's not a popular idea,' Professor Dickman said at an international biodiversity conference held at the University of NSW.

According to Professor Dickman, dingoes would help to control feral foxes and cats that he claimed were behind the decrease in numbers and extinction of small animals such as the NSW bilby and species of native mice.

He said 40 per cent of marsupials and 75 per cent of native mice are now extinct in semi-arid regions of western NSW, central Queensland and parts of Western Australia.

'It's unparalleled,' he said of the loss.

Pointing to experience in the US, where wolves and coyotes have been reintroduced to rangelands as well as to wild areas, Professor Dickman said: 'There are ways to encourage people (to accept reintroduction) where livestock occurs.'

Professor Dickman claimed that work in the study area revealed that dingoes are often wrongly blamed for damage to livestock.

The usual culprits, he said, were 'town dogs'.