These beautiful pictures (with my favourite snowy backdrop!) were sent to me by Julie Fechner of Dingo Care Network, an organization that conserves, researches and creates awareness about the Australian Dingo.
I've been fascinated by Dingos ever since I saw them years ago in a zoo in Sydney. I wasn't so interested in primitive dogs at the time, but I was still very intrigued by their appearance. They looked so familiar, like our pariah dogs, but strangely unfamiliar too. For one thing, they didn't bark!
Later in Kuranda we attended a performance by aboriginal artists and I remember they brilliantly imitated Dingo vocalizations, on their famous wind instrument the didgeridoo.
To many of us the Dingo is an iconic animal and symbolic of Australia, like the koala or kangaroo. There is still considerable mystery surrounding its origin and when it first arrived on the continent. Modern genetic studies are throwing new light on the role it has played in Australia's ancient culture.
Ever since European colonization, the Dingo has been considered a dangerous pest - sad but inevitable in a country with so much livestock-farming. Today the pure Dingo is facing extinction thanks to large-scale killing programmes and hybridization with Eurobreeds (80 per cent of Dingos are believed to be hybrids).
This kind of genetic contamination is a threat to aboriginal dogs everywhere, including to the INDog - the Dingo's distant relative.
Dingo Care Network has been working for several years to protect this unique dog. A few months ago they won a significant victory when the state of Victoria changed the Dingo's status from pest to threatened species.
Incidentally, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species classifies the Dingo as "vulnerable."
Click here for Dingo Care Network's website: it gives lots of interesting information, including on research and conservation efforts. Make sure you visit the photo gallery, the pups are absolutely adorable!
Photos: Julie Fechner
Dingo Care Network,
Victoria,
Australia
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