Media Release
National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program (Inc. A0051763G )
Date: Monday September 3, 2018
Victorian government must see through poison industry propaganda
Today, the National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program Inc. called upon the Victorian government to see through the half truths and propaganda from extreme elements within the farming industry which advocate for an ever increasing use of poisons across Victorian public land to control ‘wild dogs’ or dingoes.
Vice President of the NDPRP, Arthur Gorrie, today stated:
‘Too often, the loudest voices heard by governments on the routine use of poisons in the natural environment seem to be farm lobby extremists (whose views are not supported by all farmers) and persons associated with poison manufacturers and distributors. The Victorian government needs to start listening to the best scientific advice on this issue, rather than poison industry advocates masquerading as environmentalists.’
The most recent instance of poison industry propaganda of this kind has come in response to the initiative of Victorian Senator, the Hon. Derryn Hinch, on August 16 2018, to phase out use of the controversial poison ‘1080’ in Australia. Senator Hinch’s call to cease the use of 1080 poison was immediately met with a barrage of hysteria and hyperbole in defence of the poison.
Refuting the key misleading claims of poison advocates, Mr Gorrie stated:
‘The claim that the discontinuation of the use of the toxin 1080 would devastate agricultural production is false. The fact is that official statistics of farm stock losses from dingo predation in Victoria are very low. In 2016-2017, there were only 995 farm stock (mostly sheep) reported lost to predation out of a population of more than 13 million sheep. This is a loss of 76 sheep in every 1 million sheep.
Yet, the Victorian government continues to waste millions of dollars of public money every year poisoning the Victorian landscape to kill dingoes, conceding to irrational farm lobby pressure to escalate the use of poison.
At the same time, the Victorian government can produce no convincing evidence that the destruction of dingoes (a threatened native species in Victoria) and ecologically functional dingo hybrids, results in any significant protection for farm stock.’
The second misleading claim of the poison industry is that the continued use of 1080 poison across the natural landscape not only protects farm stock, but also native species from predation.
On this issue, Mr Gorrie stated:
‘This is as silly as calling for the removal of lions from African ecosystems because they eat other animals. The tactic of poison advocates is to lump together feral cats, foxes and ‘wild dogs’, or dingoes, as a threat to native species. While cats and foxes are a serious threat to the survival of many small native animals, the function of dingoes as top order native predators within Australian ecosystems has been identified by many esteemed Australian environmental scientists as crucial to ecosystem health and to the survival prospects of small native animals. Indeed, there is much evidence that stable dingo populations suppress the negative impact of foxes and cats, which results in a net benefit to the survival of threatened small native species.’
The NDPRP emphasises that the large body of scientific research which highlights the importance of dingoes to ecosystem health is conveniently ignored by poison industry lobbyists whose selection of evidence tends to support their preconceptions and self interest. Indeed, much poison industry money has been channelled into an attempt to refute such high-integrity independent research. It is now a serious matter that industry funded research of questionable quality appears to be influencing government policy, including in Victoria.
‘It is concerning that the Victorian government appears to have fallen under the political spell of farming lobby and poison industry extremists, at the expense of responsible, scientifically well informed environmental management.’,
Mr Gorrie said.
National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program Inc.
Contact:
Dr Ian Gunn ian.gunn@hotmail.com