Living with dingoes: Understanding behaviour to inform management
Alexander Dibnah
Understanding how to manage the impacts of dingoes (Canis lupus dingo) is inseparable from understanding dingoes themselves. As Australia’s only apex predator on the mainland, dingoes bring key ecological benefits and hold longstanding cultural significance, yet this is often jeopardised by a limited awareness of what a dingo is, and by attempts to remove them in response to negative impacts on threatened species and humans. Non-lethal management offers a route to maintaining these benefits while mitigating the impacts. However, to achieve this, we must first uncover the social structure that underpins dingo behaviour and movement and adopt an evidence-based approach in developing management tools for manipulating this behaviour and reducing conflict. This talk will explore the social lives of dingoes, presenting field observations and data from research in the Myall Lakes National Park and framing this within a broader management context. Moreover, it presents recent experimental findings of ultrasonic playbacks being highly effective at deterring dingoes from a potential food reward, which has important conservation implications for the protection of threatened native shorebird and turtle nests from predation. Overall, this talk aims to grow appreciation for the complex social lives and family structure of this often misunderstood wild canid species, and share a positive outlook on the future of non-lethal methods for managing dingoes while retaining them in Australian landscapes.
Meet our speaker:
Alex is a third-year PhD candidate from the Centre for Ecosystem Science (CES) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) studying dingo social ecology, communication, and the development and testing of non-lethal management tools. His research is embedded within the broader Myall Lakes Dingo/Dapin project and supervised by Dr Neil Jordan and Dr Benjamin Pitcher. His research interests are seated in understanding carnivore behaviour in order to better manage their negative impacts while preserving their benefits. Alex has a background in conducting field research and behavioural observations of large carnivores in Africa, particularly African wild dogs, and aims to apply behavioural and ecological knowledge to advancing non-lethal methods of carnivore management and reduce reliance on lethal control. In Australia, his PhD research is investigating dingo social dynamics, the function of howling through its temporal and spatial patterns, the role of visual scrape-marking signals at scent marking sites, and testing the efficacy of ultrasonic playback deterrents as a non-lethal dingo management tool for threatened species conservation and public safety.
