Large-scale wild dog and feral pig tracking project delayed by rain

Western Tracks is a landholder-driven collaring project aimed at optimising management activities to control wild dogs in flood and associated country of the Paroo, Cuttaburra, Warrego and Darling River systems.

Collaborators include Western Local Land Services, the NSW Department of Primary Industries, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and the NSW Farmer's Association, and its wild dog coordinator Bruce Duncan said although the project was endorsed at forums in Broken Hill and Tilpa in mid-2019, wet conditions had hampered subsequent trapping efforts.

"Before the rain, everything was confined to watering points but that's not the case now - their food is widespread and there's lots of grass to hide in," he said. "We're trying to get back out there now to do more trapping but are being cut off by water in key places."

To date, the project has managed to collar seven wild dogs, five of which were baited and one that was retrapped, leaving one alive providing data on how it's using the landscape.

Mr Duncan said the wet conditions had been ideal in one way, in showing how floodwaters affect wild dog movements and whether they maintain the same home range.

"One of the dogs, Vivi moved back and forth across the Paroo without any trouble, and interestingly spent most of her time in country without livestock," he said. "She would have had to swim but the river was not an impediment."

Many more feral pigs, 37, have been collared, thanks to the easier access to pigs and the existing knowledge of Darren Marshall of SQ Landscapes, which has been utilised on that side of the project.

"I understand they're getting good data - the collars allow pigs to be tracked day and night, and all that information can be matched with weather and seasons," Mr Duncan said.

NSW DPI principal research scientist Peter Fleming said the GPS data from collars was fundamental to providing valuable scientific guidance into future planning for pest animal management.

"The landholder-driven project will give a clear picture of the scale at which control is required," Dr Fleming said. "The data will show where wild dogs move across land tenure boundaries, helping people focus on where control programs are needed and the resources that will be required."

Mr Duncan said getting good scientific information was critical.

"People really want to know how they can do more and do it effectively," he said.

As well as being the first time collared wild dogs have been let out on landholders' country at this scale, its focus on the interaction between dogs and pigs hasn't been done before, meaning the project stands to deliver some valuable insights.

Outcomes haven't been released to date thanks to the difficulties in collaring enough wild dogs, meaning the data they do have can't yet be validated.

However, an instance has already been recorded where a dog walked around three GPS-logged baits but still died from eating a bait some time later.

"The first times it might have been too hot, too late, not hungry - these are the things we're trying to ascertain," Mr Duncan said.

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National wild dog coordinator Greg Mifsud said one of the purposes of the project was to see if baits killed dogs, which had been shown to be the case.

"It was instigated because people wanted to know if wild dogs were encountering baits and eating them, and then whether pigs were undermining baiting programs and how to better target them," he said.

The project is mapping ground and aerial baiting to determine if collared wild dogs travel up bait lines or not, and is setting camera traps in the landscape to monitor the effectiveness of control.

The Western Tracks project team is now monitoring traps, looking for signs of wild dogs to collar more in the project area.

The collars are timed to last six to 12 months before automatically disengaging, and if a collared wild dog is controlled by trapping, shooting or poisoning, the collar is recovered and can be reused on another wild dog.

The movement of collared animals will be monitored for up to a year, and it's expected data will be available soon after all the collars have been collected, during 2022.

Mr Mifsud said the information would likely be relevant to western and south western Queensland as well, given the environments were similar.

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