Media Release
National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program (Inc. A0051763G )
Date: Wednesday May 5 2021
Dingo ‘attack’ propaganda
Reports of dingo ‘attacks’ on Fraser Island (K’gari) are misleading and leave out relevant details, the President of the NDPRP, and Vice President of Save Fraser island Dingoes (SFID) Jennifer Parkhurst said today.
Reports about the latest ‘attack’ on a four year old boy at Orchid Beach have failed to mention that this child suffered two red marks and a slight graze to his thigh and did not need medical attention. The dingo was easily scared away.
Could we say the same of a real attack? A dingo would not be deterred, and there would be much more than a graze.
The information that the child was playing outside of his holiday house, unsupervised, in an area where it is known there are dingoes present, was very much played down.
The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) has repeatedly warned families visiting the island to keep a strict eye on their children at all times.
Reports repeatedly lack information about the estimated age of the dingo involved.
Juveniles are out and about at this time, displaced from their packs now that the alpha pack members are mating. It is implied that during mating season dingoes are ‘more’ aggressive, suggesting there is aggression in the first place. However, dingoes are not inherently aggressive, and certainly not against people; they are merely driven by an irresistible urge to mate. This sometimes involves fighting amongst each other, but fights are rarely lethal.
Many dingoes are displaced due to the fires that ravaged the island earlier in the year, their territories decimated. Dingoes are under a great deal of food stress, making them more likely to visit townships and high use tourist areas and attempt to interact with people.
Not only are the dingoes under food stress, they are also suffering from the influx of thousands of tourists during the Easter period and the long weekends we have been enjoying recently. Fraser Island is a hostile place for dingoes at this time. They are trying to find new territories, trying to mate, trying to find enough food, all while keeping away from human-imposed boundaries they do not understand.
QPWS is apparently looking for the dingo which perpetrated this ‘attack’, hopefully not to destroy it. Because as we all know if a dingo really wanted to attack a person they would not live to tell the tale.
The NDPRP chartered a helicopter during the fire to assess the situation and found that in our opinion, few animals could have escaped. It was literally a raging inferno. Subsequently we believe that the dingo population would have diminished substantially. We therefore ask the QPWS to refrain from destroying any dingoes for these ‘attacks’, and focus instead on preserving and building up this World Heritage valued species.
We would also ask the media to please not refer to these incidents as attacks, when clearly that is not the case. These are scratches, nips, and bites, all things a family dog would do if it were over excited.
Jennifer Parkhurst
President NDPRP
Vice President SFID