RAVAGES OF DINGOS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 7

RAVAGES OF DINGOS

GRAZIERS RUINED A. NEW SOUTH WALES TROUBLE,

(raoa otrit own cor.msPONDEm.) SYDNEY, 4th April. _ Of late years, owing to the disrepair ol vermin-proof fences, and the droughty conditions in the heart of Australia,-Jihe (far western stations holders in New j South Wales have suffered terribly from the depredations of the dingo, and soihs have been ruined 'thereby. Great packs of these vicious native dogs, driven by want of food, have overcome their profound aversion to the proximity of man or anything appertaining) to man, and have fallen voraciously upon the sheep. I And when the dingo comes he does not I stop when his appetite is appeased. For the sheer lust of killing, a pack will leave a 'plain strewn with the dead or mauled bodies of sheep. . A member of I a deputation which waited on the Mm- ' ister of Lands during the past week to request that the Government would grant a twenty-one years' loan for the | erection, of fences, and pass legislation ■ similar to that in South Australia for dealing with the menace, declared that during the past few year* the destruction done by the dingos had deprived him of the fruits of thirty-five years of enterprise west of the Darling River. His losses through this cause, he said, included three holdings.. He asserted that the graziers were prepared for .periodical droughts, and knew how to meet them and restock whan they hadi pawed away, but the dingo was something quite different, and under existing ' conditions companies were unwillingto aatist in restocking. The deputation had the satisfaction of receiving an assurance that some action along the lines of that requested would be taken by the Government.

Farmers in the more settled areas further east are greatly perturbed at the invasion of the trans-Darling regions, fearing that an increase in the dingos in their own parts will ensue. As things are, stray wild dogs, when they appear, are so assiduously hunted down that they have little opportunity to multiply. Some individual dogs, when they become the terror of a neighbourhood, have prices put on their heads amounting on occasions to twenty or thirty pounds and more. But the dihgo has almost satanic cunning. Beside him the fox is a foolish animal. A fox can be trapped by those who knew how to lay a trap properly, but to poison or trap a dingo is impossible,, and it is a.long job. hunting him down. , ■ ■ . ■ ■ •