The dingo could be extinct within 20 years
March 2nd 2009 22:01
The dingo, a pure-bred, wild Australian native dog, could be extinct within 20 years.
The annual conference of the Ecological Society of Australia, held in Sydney recently, was told that in some parts of the country as few as 15 to 20 per cent of dingoes remain pure, with the rest being cross-bred.
Dr Ricky Spencer, of the native and pest animal unit of the University of Western Sydney, told the conference that domestic and feral dogs were destroying the native animal.
"The domestic dogs are actually mixing with the dingoes. I guess you'd call it a form of genetic pollution to some degree (because) they're originated from European settlement,'' he said after the conference.
The cross-breeding is also turning dingoes into larger dogs, with the average body mass of wild dingoes increasing more than 20 per cent in the past 40 years.
"The pure dingo is very close to becoming extinct," and it was sad that Australia was losing an "iconic'' species, Dr Spencer said.
The canis lupus dingo is also known as warrigal, maliki, mirigung, Decker dog, boololomo and Australian native dog.
It is not technically Australian, however. It is thought to have entered Australia about 4,000 years ago from Asia, and dingoes are still to be found in South-east Asia, mostly in small pockets of remaining natural forest.
Dingoes have features in common with both wolves and modern dogs, and are regarded as more or less unchanged descendants of an early ancestor of modern dogs. The name dingo comes from the language of the Eora Aboriginal people, the original inhabitants of the Sydney area.
news.com.au, en.wikipedia.org, dognewsaustralia.com.au
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