Newly-elected Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell intends to take up the issue of increasing dingo protection with the government when state parliament resumes this year.
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While dingoes have been listed as threatened under Victoria's Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act and are protected on most areas of public land under the Wildlife Act, they are unprotected on all private land in Victoria and in 3km buffer zones around private property in large areas of public land in the state's east and north-west, where they are baited and hunted.
"There's a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation about dingoes and how important they are to biodiversity and the environment," the member for Northern Victoria Region says.
"Despite them being protected under wildlife laws there are so many loopholes that are seeing them exploited, and we want to put an end to that."
Specifically the party's policy is to see an end to the use of 1080 baits - used aerially and on the ground to poison "wild dogs", cats and foxes - and an end to fox and wild dog bounties across the state.
Ms Purcell describes the bounty, which she says has cost $17 million since it was reintroduced in 2016, as "a complete waste of taxpayer money" that has failed to have a significant impact on stock losses.
READ ALSO: Jirrahlinga a haven for dingos
The use of 1080 poison, they say, is both cruel and ineffective, causing increases in other pest species through the reduction of targeted animals and also posing a threat to other native species.
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Also pursuing dingo welfare policies will be the Greens, who in the last parliament pushed for a parliamentary inquiry into ecosystem decline in Victoria that canvassed issues around the animals' management.
The Environment and Planning Committee's December 2021 report made a series of recommendations including the review of laws governing invasive species management, the phase-out of 1080 and the trial reintroduction of dingoes as an apex predator in suitable ecosystems where they are no longer found.
The committee heard evidence that dingoes are important in maintaining biodiversity in the landscape, keeping introduced predators - particularly cats and foxes - under control and thus benefiting small native mammals.
However, a minority report by the Liberal and National members of the committee opposed the reintroduction of dingoes into the landscape.
Plans to do so in Gariwerd (the Grampians National Park) were shelved last year when farmers reacted angrily to the publication of the park's draft management plan.
The Nationals member for Western Victoria Bev Macarthur, who considered it a clear threat to local livestock, labelled the plan "ludicrous", and cited a petition signed by 4000 people opposing it.
A petition by the Castlemaine-based Association for Conservation of Australian Dingoes calling for lethal control of the animals to cease and for their reintroduction into the environment has attracted more than 46,000 signatures over a nine-year period.
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