A comment on the influence of dingoes on the Australian sheep flock.

Allen andWest recently proposed that dingoes (Canis dingo, including hybrids with feral dogs C. lupus familiaris) are a critical causal factor in the decline of Australia’s sheep (Ovis aries) flock and implied that dingoes would cause the rangeland sheep industry to disappear within 30−40 years. We agree that dingo predation can reduce the profitability of affected sheep properties and has important negative social effect on rural communities, and that exclusion fences and a range of lethal control methods are options for reducing those negative effects. However, we argue that the importance of dingoes as a cause of the decline in Australia’s sheep flock has been overstated.