Surely the NSW Gov has an interest in actually knowing the population size of an animal species like dingoes - especially goven the already huge amounts of $$$$ spent on “management”.

How is success shown if not measuring density / population size…
Or is # of baits laid really the success measure?

Best way to support those aims would be to share samples with conservation geneticists 😉 especially those with expertise studying dingoes (or other canids).

It’s well established that hundreds if not thousands of dingo samples have already been collected - and are held by NSW DPI.

We absolutely should be quantifying and managing the negative impacts of lethal control on dingo populations.We know dingoes are impacted by low genetic diversity, inbreeding and indiscriminate killing results in genetic bottlenecks.

We don’t even have an estimate of the number of dingoes in NSW.

Dingoes associated with Indigenous Australians do start to show up around 2,500 ybp (maybe older yet to be found/dated)- but burial was not always practiced nor did most dingoes live with humans.

I think the arrival time is around 10,000-8,000 years - after the Tasmanian land bridge flooded and before the Sahul (New Guinea-Australia) landbridge flooded. I agree much older than 10,000ybp is unlikely.

Also molecular divergence date may not reflect arrival.

The molecular divergence date of the dingo lineage is >10,000 years based on ancient DNA calibration (Bergstrom et al 2020). Lack of >3,500ybp fossils is not evidence. We know fossil recruitment is poor in tropical environs and depends on density of the animal population (plus many other factors).

Interesting new paper on the complexities of assigning Canis species by @drcairns.bsky.social @euanritchie.bsky.social and others. Very reminiscent of the ongoing debacle in North America with the Eastern/red wolf complex.