THE PINGO PEST

Southland Times, Issue 19458, 24 January 1925, Page 15

THE PINGO PEST

CAUSING HEAVY LOSSES. WAR OF EXTERMINATION URGED. (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright ) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) SYDNEY, January 22. The rapid increase of the dingo pest in recent years in various parts of Australia where these animals were formerly scarce has been causing grave concern to the sheep owners, who have suffered severe losses. Mr Lance Losque, the well-known zoologist, who has been investigating the subject for the past two years, and has just returned from an extended trip in Western Australia and South Australia, states that the pest undoubtedly is increasing rapidly throughout the continent. He says there are dingoes to-day where there were none twenty years ago, and their ravages are causing immense losses. Some stations had in the last few years lost 10,000 sheep and lambs from their ravages, while the sheep tally in the West Darling country had dropped from 15,000,000 to 4,500,000, due largely to the some cause. The dingos, he continued, had not killed all that number, but because of the trouble they gave pastoralists had withdrawn from that country. The erection of dog-proof fencing was adding a heavy burden to the wool industry. The increase and spread of the rabbits, which provided food for the dingos, was one cause of the greater prevalence of the pect, and unless an organised war of extermination was quickly undertaken the wool industry was bound to suffer much more seriously than it did at present.