Fixing the fence: Rebuilding the aging outback dog fence | Wide Open Spaces #4 | ABC Australia

i've lived in the bush all my life and started work in nineteen seventies at jacqueline malianry so the doc fence has always been a bit of my life to come and actually work on it it's probably almost a dream come true i guess [Music] it's the thin grey line separating wild dogs north of it from sheep to itself the dog fence spans 5 400 kilometres from the great australian bite through to queensland's darling downs it's supposed to prevent this the mauling of small livestock the metal strain is just incredible people can't sleep at night you know they get up in the morning they go out they go around their sheep and they see 30 or 40 sheep predated they'll continue to to kill livestock continuously and it's a and in the end you can't actually operate at any kind of level of profitability if the dogs get too severe [Music] so james we're driving along the south australian dog fence what does the dog fence mean to you here i'll prove that dog fence is an essential part of our infrastructure it protects all the livestock south of the fence in the sheep country from predation by wild dogs in particular so it's very important we couldn't operate without it james morgan runs mooteroo pastoral company in south australia's northeast the company has four properties more than five million acres on both sides of the dog fence queeney station to the north carries cattle while dog numbers make sheep unviable to the south or inside the fence mali maliangri is for wool growing the shearing shed hasn't seen much action though the drought has kept sheep numbers extremely low and wild dogs have also taken a toll having seeped through the aging barrier that's meant to keep them out [Applause] our worst year was two years ago during the beginning of this this recent drought in 2018 we uh we destroyed and trapped uh over 360 dogs on malayangri station which is unprecedented it's a journey through here isn't it yes it is yes we're about to go the sand has drifted so much over the years that beneath these dunes are the remnants of earlier fence lines in some places there'd be two or three complete fences under the sand hills so two or three fence lines actually beneath the current fence line it's that's kind of gobsmacking i think it's hard to even imagine that isn't it well it is really yeah dog exclusion fences were first built around private properties more than a century ago in the 1940s their perimeters were joined to form part of the continuous fence we see today it's consistently patrolled by employees of the various state governments checked for holes and insecure posts and trappers catch and kill problematic dogs but the simple fact is many of these posts and wires are a hundred years old this section of the south australian dog fence is a really good example of how it's been fixed and refixed over the years this is the original rabbit wire it's probably 80 years old and that's the top of that fence this barbed wire so you can see how much is buried beneath this sand dune this wire here is probably from the 1970s it's called marsupial wire and it allowed the small marsupials to come in but not the larger ones and then that was extended again later on and this wire here is much more recent and it's been very securely anchored into the ground so that no animals can get underneath you can see why they want a new one [Music] in may work began on the new 1600 kilometer south australian dog fence with 25 million dollars from the state and federal governments and the sheep industry there are staged tenders for different sections barra based fencing contractor david miller has invested around four hundred thousand dollars in new equipment and has been completing the first 11 kilometers before we use this tractor which runs on auto steer to give us an ab line we work about three meters off the fence start at three meters and hopefully end at three meters we go back to the start so that could be two k's back and then start driving our droppers and posing and we put a kilometer in about every two and a half hours only once a section of the new fence is built can the old one be demolished it's a brutal affair decades of history bound up in barbed wire are bulldozed you get mixed feelings about these things you don't like to see things just bulldozed down the road that have that have got history about them but yeah we've got to we've still got to think about progress and the enhancement of that of our great industry wool grower greg treloar has lost 2 800 sheep two wild dogs over the past three years and he's destroyed more than 200 dogs and that's inside the fence where sheep are meant to be protected the drought to the north has forced all the dogs to move down and put pressure on the fence the rose and everything else moving down as well would put pressure holes would form the dogs would come through to go over the top in some spots the fifth generation pastoralist won the contract for the early earth works the next section will be on his property he'd really like to get that job i would be awesome to do that i mean it's been really nice to be able to say we've been part of the start of the fence rebuild but to actually do something on your own place would be really nice once the fence is down the tinder dry native pine posts and generations of mangled metal is burned history going up in smoke it's the price of progress by 2025 the new fence should be finished and the systematic culling of dogs inside it will really kick off a policy before the south australian government could make baiting with 1080 poison compulsory something most local pastoralists support we think that everyone or every property should have some baits placed out twice a year just to keep a lid on any kind of populations of dogs that people are unaware of baiting is controversial though and ecologist dr catherine mosby says it shouldn't be mandatory i think if you don't have a dingo issue to force people to go and put baits out when they might have working dogs you know it takes time it takes money and if there's no problem if there's no issue with dingos there then you know it sort of seems a bit unnecessary in these parts the fence is all about protecting livestock from vicious wild dogs we know that but behind the scenes there is a greater debate going on about what actually constitutes a wild dog new dna research shows that most outback dogs in fact almost all of them are either dingo or part dingo and there are growing calls to protect them as a native australian animal all state federal and territory governments define wild dogs as dingoes domestic dogs that have gone feral and hybrids but university of new south wales ecologist dr kylie cans says it's time to stop calling dingo's wild dogs there is a perception in the public that in australia there are large populations of feral dogs roaming around australia and dna testing essentially says that no that's not correct these animals are dingoes and ningos are a native animal feral domestic dogs are more prevalent in the high country of victoria and new south wales but in outback western central and south australia they're largely dingoes in south australia it's revealed that 100 of the animals are more than three-quarters dingo and 90 are purer or probable than goats she believes pastoralists should learn to live with dogs particularly as studies now show there are unique strains of dingoes in different regions what grazers should be focusing on is non-lethal control so that's finding ways to protect your stock from predation but not eradicating the dingos in the area so you might use things like electric fencing or livestock guardian animals or targeted lethal control of animals that are particularly eating your sheep or kettle instead of landscape level aerial baiting where you're essentially eradicating an entire population across a large landscape dr catherine mosby is another university of new south wales ecologist but she lives on south australia's air peninsula her view is that dingoes and small livestock probably can't co-exist so if there is to be a sheep industry then the dogs do need to be controlled south of the fence i see both sides i mean i know a lot of pastoralists and i can see the damage that dingoes do and i guess i i just want to find that middle ground where we are protecting the dingo as a legitimate wildlife species but we're also recognising that it can do damage and sometimes we you know we have to control them as well but dr mosby is concerned dingoes are increasingly being targeted north of the fence it's short-sighted because research shows they keep rabbit goat and kangaroo populations in check baiting dingos in cattle production areas can actually be detrimental to cattle producers so dingoes perform an ecosystem function of controlling kangaroo populations and so if we have dingos in an area they perform a net benefit to cattle farmers by improving the amount of pasture available to cattle farmers [Music] chair of the sa dog fence board jeff power maintains there are plenty of dingos north of the fence so they're not in any way a threatened species and the law is pretty clear the legislation says that dogs inside the fence must be eradicated they're deemed a pest and outside the fence the dogs are deemed a native animal and they have got some sort of protection but when numbers become extremely high uh land holders can take control methods to you as someone who runs sheep and cattle does it make a difference as to whether it's a dingo or some other kind of hybrid if i'm being honest no because it's in my eyes it's a predator um you know i'm a dog lover the same as anyone else the pet dogs but but dogs that are out here they're not where they should be you could argue that outside the dog fence there is some relevance to whether they are a purebred dingo or not but inside that they are fair game for us i think that debate will continue but the fence construction now stops for a few weeks as new wire and posts are sourced demand following the bushfires and trade delays because of the pandemic has slowed supply dave miller wants to continue his work on the dog fence though he's well aware of the iconic nature of this job i've lived in the bush all my life and started work in nineteen seventies at jacqueline malia angry so the doc fence has always been a bit of my life the first time i ever saw a dog fence i thought it was a big deal when i was 17 years old i thought this was fantastic so to come and actually work on it it's probably almost a dream come true i [Music] guess

Channel: ABC Australia

Views: 71,343

Rating: 4.8653002 out of 5

Keywords: ABC, Australia, ABC Australia, bush, outback, pastoral, pioneer, land, history, dog, wild dogs, wilderness, feral, pests, farming, sheep, dingoes, exploration, nature, environment, resilience, endurance, adventure, engineering, animals, attacks s

Id: aDXLVEavDjs

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021