Dingoes are being culled in Victoria. How much harm to the species is needed to protect commercial profits?

A Victorian government decision to allow dingo culling in the state’s east until 2028 has reignited debate over what has been dubbed Australia’s most controversial animal.

Animals Australia, an animal welfare group, has filed proceedings in the Supreme Court of Victoria, challenging the decision. The case is due to be heard this year.

Announcing the legal action, the group said the eradication program targeted a unique native animal at risk of extinction, and ignored pleas from Traditional Owners who “treasure the dingo as a totem species”.

The controversy raises a few thorny questions. Are dingoes an important native species or an agricultural pest? And what is the right balance between protecting the species, and protecting the interests of farmers?

What’s this all about?

Dingoes are listed as vulnerable in Victoria. This means the species faces a high risk of extinction in the wild over the medium term.

Dingoes are also protected under Victoria’s Wildlife Act – unless a special order is made to declare them “unprotected”. To date, these unprotection orders have been made when authorities deem it necessary to prevent dingoes from killing livestock.

An unprotection order means a person can legally kill dingoes in certain areas of private and public land, by trapping, poisoning or shooting.

Since around 2010, a succession of unprotection orders have allowed dingoes to be killed in various parts of Victoria. The unprotection order now being challenged came into effect on October 1 last year and will continue until January 1, 2028.

Announcing the decision, Victoria’s Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos says the government was:

striking the right balance between protecting our vulnerable dingo populations while giving farmers the ability to protect their livestock, and we will regularly engage to ensure settings continue to achieve this balance.

Dingoes are not ‘wild dogs’

DNA studies suggest dingoes have been in Australia for between 4,600 and 18,000 years. Often wrongly described as “wild dogs”, they are actually descended from south Asian wolves.

Adding to the complications, it can be hard to distinguish between a wild dog and a dingo without DNA testing.

Dingoes were once widespread across Victoria but are now extinct across most of the state, save for two populations in the state’s north and east.

Conservationists and scientists fear the extended order in eastern Victoria may push dingoes to local extinction

The experience in north-west Victoria offers a cautionary tale. There, under a dingo unprotection order, the population dropped to as few as 40 individuals. The local dingo population was deemed “critically low and at risk of extinction”, prompting the government to reinstate dingo protections.

In eastern Victoria, the dingo population is estimated at between 2,640 and 8,800.

However in September last year, before the unprotection order in eastern Victoria came into effect, Nationals Member for Gippsland, Tim Bull, claimed 1,500 dingoes were already being killed in the region each year by farmers and others.

If those figures are correct, it suggests extending the unprotection order until 2028 will devastate the dingo population in eastern Victoria.

A decline in dingo populations is not just a concern for the species itself – it will have knock-on effects.

Dingoes are apex predators and research shows they are central to how ecosystems function. They can help control introduced predators such as foxes, feral cats and rabbits. This benefits native animals and plants.

Is the balance right?

Given the risks to dingo populations and the broader environment, it’s pertinent to ask if the government decision swings too far towards protecting agricultural production.

One report suggests within Victoria’s 16 “wild dog management zones” in the 2022–23 financial year, there were more than 1.7 million head of livestock. Of these, 1,455 were confirmed killed by dingoes. While understandably of concern to farmers, this nonetheless represents a tiny proportion of total stock numbers.

The number of sheep killed by dingoes is also only a fraction of the 14.6 million currently farmed in Victoria. Sheep are not at risk of extinction.

These numbers suggest the government has not struck the right balance between protecting livestock and ensuring dingo populations survive.

Considering the rights of Traditional Owners

When weighing up an unprotection order, a minister must consider how it affects the rights of Traditional Owners.

In 2023, when deliberating over whether to make an unprotection order in eastern Victoria, the Victorian government stated that for Aboriginal people:

• dingoes are part of their living cultural heritage

• the loss of a dingo is akin to the loss of a family member

• the dingo helps maintain connection to Country

• some have a totemic and kinship relationship with the dingo.

The government said while the order would limit Aboriginal people’s rights, this was justified when taking other factors into account.

The court will decide

Animal protection group Animals Australia has filed proceedings in the Supreme Court of Victoria, challenging the lawfulness and validity of the unprotection order. Court documents are not yet publicly available.

Australia does not have a single and consistent animal welfare and protection regime. Instead, protections are fractured between the states. That is why the current challenge to dingo culling is limited to Victoria, even though culling takes place in other states. This illustrates the difficulty in using the law to protect animals at a national level.

This challenge is part of a broader push to redefine the relationship between humans and animals through what’s known as animal law. In recent years, animal advocates have used various aspects of the law to challenge the gassing of pigs before they are slaughtered, and recreational duck shooting.

The current case is an important test for how the law balances the needs of humans and animals – and in particular, how much harm is deemed “necessary” at law to protect commercial profit and livelihood.