Shannons Flat farmer Laura Luton wants the ACT Government to work cooperatively with farmers so their enterprises are not killed off by wild dog attacks
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00:00So we're currently in Shannon's flat. This is my home. This is where I live with my
00:08husband and our two children. The farm's been in my husband's family for five
00:13generations now. Dates back to the turn of the century I suppose. We do have a
00:17problem with wild dogs. We share a boundary with the Nimadji National Park.
00:21Obviously wild dogs are protected within the National Park. They are a declared
00:27pest but they have been protected for decades. There are large swathes of
00:30country where they cannot be harmed. What's happening for us is that they are
00:34leaving the areas where they are supposed to stay. They are leaving the
00:38conservation areas and they are heading into private country where they're
00:43causing havoc for livestock producers like my family and for other families like
00:47us. That's happening in places like Thawa. So numbers vary from year to year. Just
00:53this year, this calendar year alone, we're up to 24. That's a very concerning
00:57number for us because we have de-stocked the country along the Nimadji boundary.
01:01So theoretically they should be safe where they are. The fact that they are
01:05getting hit in the locations that they're in indicates to us that there are
01:09lots of dogs and that they are moving into further into areas of private land in
01:14New South Wales. So it just boils down to cooperation. Just basic neighbours behaving
01:18like neighbours. Historically we do really well with this problem when we work
01:23together. So it's about getting the experience and the expertise of private
01:27landholders and the experience and expertise of public land managers working
01:32cooperatively and collaboratively to identify places where dingoes should be
01:37and places where dingoes shouldn't be and then you know getting traps and baits and
01:42control measures in. Unfortunately for us the ACT government has over the years
01:48declined their commitment and we're seeing spates of dog attacks coming out of the
01:53park and we're getting very little response. There's been some recent
01:58research on dogs in Nimadji. The the most current information comes from Dr.
02:03Kylie Cairns and she's saying that they are purely dingoes, that they are
02:07genetically pure dingoes. In my opinion I don't think it matters at all. I think it's
02:13about cooperating to protect an iconic dingo regardless of its DNA composition. We
02:18were forming cooperative groups to protect these animals when we thought
02:22they were hybrids. It doesn't matter. Ultimately they belong in the National Park
02:27and they don't belong on our farm.