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 AUSTRALIANS FEAR NEW BREED OF 'SUPERDOG' Sun Dec 16 2001 18:13:22 ET SYDNEY -- Sheep farmers are being terrorized by packs of half-dingo, half-mastiff wild dogs they say roam the countryside and pose a danger to humans. Graziers say hundreds of sheep and lambs have been killed by the so-called "superdogs", which are breeding in rugged forests and mountains in New South Wales and Victoria. They say the dogs are so aggressive that it is only a matter of time before they attack a hiker or farmer. Six months ago wild dingoes on Fraser Island, a holiday resort off the coast of Queensland, killed a nine-year-old boy. The cross-bred dingoes, larger than normal dingoes, are the product of mating between the native dog and escaped domestic breeds such as Alsatians, pit bulls and bull mastiffs. Wild dogs have thrived since national park rangers abandoned a program of dropping poisoned meat baits from planes and helicopters four years ago. The program ended due to concerns that the baits killed tiger quolls, an endangered native animal about the size of a cat. The number of wild dogs on the loose also has increased due to a rise in recreational hunting in the forests. Hunters use breeds such as rottweilers and Rhodesian ridgebacks to go after wild pigs, and some of the dogs escape and interbreed with dingoes. Angry landowners are calling for a resumption of aerial baiting, saying the dogs are becoming increasingly bold. Farmer Stuart Morant, 50, who runs 500 sheep on a 405-hectare property in the Tallangatta Valley in Victoria, said he had lost thousands of dollars worth of livestock over the past few years. "Aside from the financial loss, it is incredibly distressing. I walked down to one of the paddocks one morning to find a wild dog had attacked a ewe as it was giving birth to a lamb. The dog had eaten half the lamb as it was coming out of the womb, and killed the mother," Mr Morant said. The problem has become so acute that Australia's first National Wild Dog Summit will be held in the city of Wodonga, Victoria, in February. Farmers, politicians and national parks rangers from Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland will meet to try to resolve their differences and plan an eradication campaign. A spokesman for the National Parks and Wildlife Service of New South Wales said: "We sympathise with farmers. They say they are witnessing the emergence of a kind of `superdog' in the mountains. We understand how tough it is to have 200 sheep killed in a season. It's very traumatic. But the tiger quoll is a threatened species." Sheep farmer Betty Murtagh rejected the quoll argument, saying the wild dogs killed quolls and other wildlife. |
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