A new collective is fighting for a sensible approach to managing Dingos

With news that at least six dingoes were euthanised on K'gari (formerly Fraser Island) after the death of a Canadian backpacker, a coalition of scientists, conservation advocates and Indigenous people – the Dingo Network – has formed to advocate for policy that ensures Australia’s dingoes thrive in protected areas.

In January, after the death of 19-year-old Canadian backpacker Piper James, Queensland authorities euthanised members of the pack found near her body, igniting a familiar Australian argument over whether the continent’s most contested predator can still belong to the landscape it has lived in for centuries.

Government officials defended the cull as a public safety measure after reports of increasingly aggressive behaviour among some animals on the island. Traditional owners and wildlife advocates responded with outrage, saying they had not been adequately consulted and warning that fear was again overtaking science.

Into that widening divide has stepped the Dingo Network, a coalition of scientists, Indigenous advocates and conservation groups arguing that dingoes are not merely dangerous scavengers but a keystone species essential to ecological balance. The network says its mission is to “align policy with science,” pushing governments to end widespread baiting and lethal control programs in protected areas across eastern Australia.

Their argument is ecological. Researchers and campaigners linked to the movement contend that dingoes suppress invasive predators such as foxes and feral cats, indirectly protecting smaller native animals already strained by habitat loss. Indigenous advocates within the network also describe the dingo as culturally inseparable from Country — not a pest, but a species essential to the habitat long before colonial fencing divided the continent.

For the Dingo Network and allied campaigners, the question is larger than one island or one fatal encounter. It is whether Australia can imagine a future in which predators are managed without being erased. Along K’gari’s beaches, the dingo remains both ancient survivor and political flashpoint — an animal carrying the burden of the country’s unresolved relationship with the wild.

To find out more or support the Dingo Network, visit https://www.dingonetwork.org.au/donate.