NATIONAL DINGO PRESERVATION AND RECOVERY PROGRAMINC: A0051763G
MEDIA RELEASE
12 April 2012
The misrepresentation of DR. Ernest Healy and dingo slaughter over the Easter period
The misrepresentation of Dr. Ernest Healy’s comments in the Fraser Coast Chronicle (FCC), Saturday March 31st, is an example of shabby journalism. It was based on selective reporting of Dr Healy’s comments to the FCC, which misled readers into believing that Dr. Healy is in agreement with DERM in its management of the Fraser Island dingo population. As a consequence, readers may mistakenly conclude that he would support dingo culling at K’Gari campground and at other campsites by DERM as a response to recent alleged ‘attacks’. This could not be farther from the truth.
It is important to make clear what Dr Healy actually said to the FCC.
As the FCC now acknowledges, in the interview with the FCC, Dr Healy emphasised that much dingo behaviour is often misinterpreted as aggression; that dingoes, especially juveniles enter into play behaviour that can be boisterous and can involve innocent nipping that can be easily be misinterpreted as an 'attack'. He further stated that he did not think the reported incidents were aggressive behaviour and added that, if a dingo did attack someone, there would be no room for doubt about the nature of the behaviour.
Dr Healy also stated that incidents involving tent ripping and foraging through campers' belongings should not be thought of as aggression; that there are numerous historical instances of this behaviour that were not related to any attack on humans or threatening behaviour – that this is simply dingo curiosity.
It is irresponsible that such dingo curiosity has been depicted by the FCC in such a damaging and exaggerated manner.
The National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program considers it disturbing that such irresponsible reporting may be used to lend legitimacy to further unnecessary culling of dingoes on Fraser Island, further undermining the viability for the Island’s population.
Such culling is further evidence of the politically compromised and ecologically unsound approach of DERM and the QPWS to dingo management of the Island.
It is a tragedy that the K’Gari area, known as paradise by the Aboriginal Butchulla people, is now a place where their totemic animal, the dingo, is unnecessarily threatened.
National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program Inc. A0051763G