To all you weekend warriors who have made the world’s largest sand island your personal male bonding paradise over the last 10-15 years - are you happy now?
For those who haven’t heard the news of yesterday’s fatal dingo attack on Fraser Island, details can be found here and here.
Thanks to many years of tourists ignoring warnings about not feeding dingoes, and in spite of the penalties in place for doing so, there’s a very good chance that the purest dingo colony in the world is now going to be culled.
Do us all a favour please - next time you decide to ignore “do not feed” warnings, make sure they relate to crocodiles.
There’s been no mention to date of him being charged - although as a tourism operator he could easily afford the $1500 fine anyway, and it probably wouldn’t be much of a deterrent.
The most productive suggestion I’ve come across so far is that people caught feeding the dingoes should not only be fined, but immediately escorted from the island.
There is no doubt that there will be a dingo cull as a result of this incident, the question is whether the Queensland government can be convinced to stop short of totally exterminating the entire dingo population of the island.
Here in the States we have a simillar problem with tourists feeding the grizzly bears in Yellowstone and other national parks. Except grizzlies are considerably bigger than dingos, like 7-9 feet tall and around 1000 lbs.
People are idiots. Wild animals are dangerous, even ones that look like dogs. The real shame is that the dingos didn’t do anything wrong - they were just acting like wild dingos. So basically people want to execute animals for being what they are - animals.
As for the dingos being “vermin” - didn’t some folks used to say that about the native peoples? If residence on the island is determined by length of time since arrive, seems to me it’s the most recent vermin (stupid tourists) who should be shot or deported.
Most hunting animals (dingos included) target the sick and the young, we know that.
Tourists want to see the local wildlife, we also know that.
Put the two together for any length of time and you will get tragedies like this.
My heart goes out to this family for their loss and maybe next time we might think twice before we feed the local wildlife.
[quote]
Reprise: Since the leaflets evidently didn’t do any good, perhaps a forced viewing by the tourists of the movie, A Cry in the Dark, will educate them.**
The tragedy is that the circumstances which created the problem of dingoes losing their fear of humans and partially dependent on them for food on Fraser Island are almost identical to those which lead up to the death of Azaria Chamberlain.
You’d have thought the inquests, the trials, and the microscopic scrutiny which that incident led to would have been enough to ensure that similar situations could never occur in this country again. Sadly, that isn’t the case.
reprise, have you see the front cover of the Herald Sun (May 1)? They have a photo of a dingo with its teeth bared and the caption “natural-born killer”. The photo has clearly been elongated so as to emphasise the snarling mouth.
At this point, it seems like the media is going to whip up a “Cull the dingos! Cull the dingos! Won’t somebody please think of the children?!” frenzy.
I heard about this but I didn’t realize that actual culling of the colony was being called for… that just plain sucks ass. I could have understood if they wanted to destroy the animals involved in the attack, not that I would have been thrilled by it-- it still goes back to stupid people ignoring the warnings not to feed the dingos, and these kids ending up suffering for it. But possibly exterminating the entire population on the island? Yeah, that makes perfect sense :rolleyes:
Actually, it sounds lke they will have to cull if they manage to convince everybody to stop feeding the damn things–one of the articles posted pointed out that the island’s population is kept artificially high by human food. I can see the justification of culling the dingos down to the point where they can live off of the resources avalible to them. It wouldn’t be right to stop feeding the dingos and then watch a portion of them starve to death. (not to mention that starving dingos with no fear of humans wold be considerably more dangerous than full dingos with no fear of humans). But culling all the dingos on the island seems ridiculous.
How about a “tough love” approach- Put up signs that read:
[ul]On this site, dingos killed a person trying to feed them.
[list][list][sub]Don’t feed the Dingos[/sub][/ul][/list][/list]That would work for me.
Just a couple of days ago, we had a bear attack near Tucson. It made no sense to me, when I first read about it here. (Unfortunately, that link will only work for one day.) Both the guys involved were experienced campers, and both were doing everything right, apparently. And yet one awoke to find his brother in a bear’s mouth.
It all finally made sense when I read this…
So, the poor guy got mauled because some nearby shitwits decided they’d camp as if they were in their backyard.
Fortunately the guy’s brother had serious presence of mind.
The bear ran off, and they were able to make it to their car, and from there to an ambulance. The guy who was mauled is in pretty good shape, and his brother is one serious tough-ass son of a bitch.
And the nearby campers are weenies who shouldn’t be allowed outside their houses, except to go to the mall.
