RAVAGES OF DINGOES.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15225, 30 April 1923, Page 7

RAVAGES OF DINGOES.

* i RUN-HOLDERS AFFECTED. Of late years, owing to the disrepair of vermin-proof fences and the droughty conditions in the heart of Australia, the far western-station holders in New South Wales have suffered terribly from the depredations of the dingo, and 'some 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. And when the dingo comes he does not 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 a deputation which waited on the Minister for Lands redently to request that the Government would grant a 21 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 years the destruction done by the dingoes had deprived him of the fruits of 35 years of enterprise west of the Darling* River. His loss 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 reslock when they had passed away, but the dingo was something quite different, and under existing conditions companies were unwilling to assist in re-stocking. 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 althe invasion of the trans-Darling regions, fearing that an increase in the dingoes in their own parts will ensue. As things are, stray wild dogs, when they .appear, are so assiduously hunted down that they have litllo 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 poi Aids and more. But the dingo has almost satanic cunning. Beside him the fox is a foolish animal. A fox can be trapped by those who know how to lay a trap properly, but to poison or trap a dinwo i is impossible, and it is a long job hunting him down.