The North-East Wild Dog Management Group says recent trials of aerial baiting show no evidence that it is effective and recommend that it be stopped. The Minister has agreed. This is great news. They also recommended more research on the effectiveness of 1080.

The push by farmers to have poison baits dropped from planes to kill wild dogs and dingoes has been successful. A three-stage government trial is currently going on and so far it has only shown that planes can drop baits accurately. But ‘can’ does not mean ‘will’.

The government has agreed to trial the sheep farmers’ ‘solution’ to wild dog attacks, which is to drop poison baits across the forested landscape from the air like hundreds and thousands. However, Environment Minister John Thwaites, is showing sensible caution and trialling dummy baits first to test the uptake by other species.

Regardless of the threat aerial baiting poses to the endangered Spot-tailed Quoll, poisoning wild dogs is still a very questionable solution to sheep losses.

Set out below are arguments against the aerial baiting of dogs, and why it may be that current control programs cause dog numbers to increase.

A new bait is being developed that, unlike 1080, is humane, is not expected to affect marsupials and would have an antidote if farm dogs were accidentally poisoned.

The chemical works on the haemoglobin, making the animal sleepy before it dies, within 40-80 minutes. With 1080, it takes many hours and causes severe thrashing and fits before death.

Very few pure dingoes remain in the wild, but a new program plans to save the dwindling dingo population through artificial insemination.

The Norwood Animal Conservation Group (a Monash University-based research group) and the Dingo Care Network have launched the Dingo Species Recovery Program in Melbourne, to save it from extinction.

After an Omeo farmer was nabbed in February 2008 for trapping kangaroos with a wire snare and leaving them to die, another farmer spoke to the media in defence of killing kangaroos. Evan Newcommen of Ensay said there needs to be a cull of Eastern Grey Kangaroos because they cause land problems. He said hundreds of kangaroos move onto their pasture from adjacent Crown land.