Wild dogs currently living in the Australian outback should be rounded up and sent to China to be processed for food, according to a leading researcher.
Wildlife expert Dr Ben Allen has caused uproar among animal activists in the country with his comments after he suggested large numbers of dingos should be exported in a scientific paper due to be published in late August.
There remain concerns over roaming packs of cross-breed dingos living all across the Australian countryside, which are said to terrorise reared sheep and cattle.
Discussing the epidemic, Dr Allen said: “We’ve got no idea how many wild dogs are in Australia, but there’s something in the order of 10,000 to 15,000 scalps a year handed in to local governments for bounty payment.”
“I think the first reaction from people when they hear the idea of selling wild dog meat to Asia is: ‘How could you possibly put our animals through that?’ But the dogs are already being killed through trapping and shooting.
“When I drive along the road in western Queensland and I see a bunch of wild dogs hanging off a fence I think ‘what a waste’.”
The researcher confirmed he was not recommending pure-bred native dingoes be killed for export, rather the tens of thousands of cross-breeds, according to the Times.
Animal activists have launched a petition demanding the conference in Brisbane at which Mr Allen is due to present his paper be cancelled, and it was reported the researcher had received death threats from those angered by his remarks.
Ernest Healy of the National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Programme said Australia’s wild dog was “a unique and distinctive animal that is still predominantly dingo in its genetic make-up” and that dingoes were being unfairly “persecuted” in some circles.
