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- Going to work,
and throughout the day, thinking about
what you're gonna come home to of an afternoon
or a night time, is sometimes quite distressing.
You never know what you're gonna find.
More disembowelled sheep,
more livestock gone,
maybe even a missing family pet, you never know.
But it's definitely something
that's thought about all the time.
We've had quite a number of sheep taken
in instances during the day.
The thing about these wild dogs is
that they kill for fun.
It's just a game to them.
They'll run them down, disembowel them,
leave them alive, and we've gotta come round
and clean up the mess,
and also we've gotta go round and put down
sheep that they've disembowelled, still alive.
This also happens to native animals as well,
such as koalas and wallabies
and every other native under the sun.
- [Ranger] Wild dogs are found right throughout
the whole of the Gold Coast.
We're finding wild dogs in some pretty built-up areas.
Generally, those dogs have been there for many years
and with the urban fringe impacting on their areas,
they're finding they've got nowhere else to go.
Wild dogs are managed because of the impact they have
on the community, and also the impact they have
on our rare and threatened species
in our conservation areas.
- I'm Micheal Pyne, I'm the senior vet here at
Currumbin Wildlife Hospital.
I've had the privilege of working here
for the past 16 years, and have seen this hospital grow
from a small shed admitting 2,000 animals
right up to a purpose-built wildlife hospital now,
where we're doing over 9,000 animals every year.
Sadly we see dog attacks happening day after day here,
with the animals that are admitted here into the hospital.
The damage they do is often quite frightening
with the animals that are admitted.
Sadly we often see animals come in that are already dead,
that are being presented through to dog attacks.
Dog attacks cause a lot of crushing injuries,
and the infection that is subsequent to the bite wounds
is often really severe.
I'm sure we only see the tip of the iceberg
with what really happens out there,
simply because dog attacks usually end in fatalities,
and a lot of the dead animals just simply aren't brought in
to us, so it's very extensive,
what happens when dogs attack our wildlife.
The dog bite wounds on an animal causes severe infection
and sadly, those animals that don't make it
into our wildlife hospital
or don't find their way to any vet clinic,
those animals would suffer severe infection
and the death would be quite slow.
These animals may survive
for anything up to a couple of weeks
after a dog attack, before it gets the better of them
and they pass away.
The suffering linked to those dog attacks
and that infection really would be immense
and it would be an awful way
for these wild animals to pass away.
- So here on the Gold Coast,
we've conducted a lot of research into wild dogs
over the last couple of years.
Wild dogs can carry a range of diseases and parasites
that can impact people and pets.
So probably the main one we're concerned about
on the Gold Coast is about 65% of wild dogs
that were sampled here were positive
for Echinococcus, which is hydatid tape worms,
which can cause cysts which impair organ function in people
and ultimately can result in severe injuries or even death.
- So in the city of Gold Coast, we control dogs
in a number of different ways,
one way being the trapping, the trapping programme.
We trap 365 days of the year, right across the Gold Coast
from north to south, east to west.
We also, in conjunction with the land holders,
we bait, on council reserves as well.
We do a lot of monitoring,
pre-monitoring, beforehand and afterwards,
to see if there's any dogs about.
It also eliminates the risk of non-target species
and domestic animals as well.
If obviously there's a lot of domestic animals in the area,
we generally won't bait there.
We'll look at other methods.
- I personally work with the City of Gold Coast
pest animal management officers.
I do camera surveillance on my own property.
I do trapping and baiting with all coordinated programmes.
Any sightings that I have
and things like that, always notify Council.
Let them know what's happening.
And they can also,
they're more than happy to help out
with anything that you need, really.
- There's been several instances of unwelcome contact
with wild dogs.
We personally have a neighbour who's a veterinarian.
She was put up a tree by a pack of five wild dogs
approximately three years ago.
There's been instances where there's been
pets taken off people's verandahs,
killed in their back yards,
poultry slaughtered, wild stock slaughtered.
So we saw that as a need,
to coordinate this baiting campaign
and try and get rid of these feral dogs.
We've had occasions where we've had cows down calving
and the dogs have killed the cow
while she's down calving.
They've taken calves.
Since we've been running this baiting campaign,
we haven't had these problems,
so that's why it's important to keep this campaign going.
My name's Peter Yaun.
I'm a fourth generation landholder
in the Gold Coast hinterland at Numinbah Valley.
We saw the need for a coordinated baiting programme
several years ago, when we were getting
hammered by these wild dogs.
So we've sort of got together,
all the relevant agencies, landowners, land care groups,
and we do a coordinated baiting programme.
The baiting programme involves getting everyone to bait
at the same time, which is a very good idea,
because you don't know where these dogs are gonna be
at any given time.
In our district, we have quite a few landholders
who are baiting and involved in the programme.
Some of these landholders used authorised people
to collect their baits, put them on their properties
if they're absentee landlords.
A lot of the others put them out on their own properties.
They identify the hot spots
where they always pick up the dogs,
and that's where the baits go.
- One of the ways that residents can help us
control wild dogs on the Gold Coast here,
is by reporting those sightings.
A lot of the time, we don't often hear about
some of the issues that have occurred.
We can hear secondhand stories of what's happened,
in the past and without us getting that information
we can't act on it.
Reporting those sightings is a huge part of it.
The City of Gold Coast also asks residents to be mindful
and respectful of some of the signage
that we have to put up to close down areas
where we're conducting these pest control measures.
Sometimes people aren't aware
of how important this is,
so even just by having someone walking through that area
can reduce our efforts in a big way.
So the City of Gold Coast also encourages
responsible pet ownership.
This includes desexing, micro-chipping, vaccinating,
making sure those pets are contained to their property.
We also encourage those dog owners
to keep their dogs on the lead.
It's not just for their protection,
but to also protect our native wildlife as well.
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