Did You Know That There's a Dingo Fence Across Half of Australia
In the words of Lizzo, “Hi, motherfucker, did you miss me [sending you missives about weird wild and wonderful animal kingdom discoveries]?”
One thing I hate, as a reader, are long explanations about why the writer hasn’t written in a while, so we’re going to skip over all that and just get to the juice.1 Now, if you aren’t a Lana Del Rey fan, the headline of this entry may not make sense to you, but it was the first thing I thought of naming this newsletter because I am a devoted Who Weekly listener and they will always keep me abreast of any new outlandish Lana Del Rey album title.
You know what I bet Lana Del Rey would love singing about if she knew it existed? The dingo fence across half of Australia! Okay, maybe not, but I would love it if someone sang about it, because it’s quite remarkable. The Dingo Fence is basically what it sounds like: a fence, to keep dingoes out, mainly because sheep ranchers were like “dingoes keep eating my baby sheeps” and Australia was like “oh, no worries, we’ll let you shoot and kill every dingo you see, and we’ll even build a giant fence about it!”
That is, of course, an oversimplification, and the article about it that sparked this interest for me is a great read if you want the full details of how the Dingo Fence came to be. The visuals in that piece are awesome, and really show the scale of the thing. The fence efforts began in the late 1800’s, and the current length of the fence was pretty much established by the 1950’s.
Here’s the hot goss on the Dingo Fence: it is over 5,600 kilometers long (3,479 miles), which is longer than the continental United States is wide (a paltry 2,680 miles/4,313 kilometers). It’s been very successful at keeping dingoes out of the non-dingo side of the fence, and in fact, you can see the effects its had on the landscape and ecology from space if you’re looking for it.
The main thing to know about dingoes is they’re basically Australia’s apex predator. They weren’t always, but it’s been a few thousand years since they arrived on the scene and at this point the ecology has adapted to the point that they’re the top dogs (heh) of the food chain. So, what happens when you decide to lock the apex predator out of approximately 1/3 of the continent? Well! Australia has essentially de-dingofied such a sizable chunk of land for so long now that the effects of eliminating the top dog have become quite clear for those paying attention.
The biggest impact of the dingo fence, or at least the most immediately noticeable from space, is the vegetation differences on either side of it. Namely, there is more vegetation on the dingoes-allowed side of the fence. The reasons for this are multiple: no dingoes means the kangaroo population is booming inside the fence without any real predators around. Kangaroos graze a lot, and that reduces the amount of vegetation significantly.2
The dingo side has more biodiversity in small mammals, and the greenery stays green for longer after it rains. This is because without dingoes to eat them, the inside of the fence has a surplus of foxes and feral cats, which predate on smaller mammals, to the point of playing a large role in the extinction of 29 species. Without these small mammals, such as the mulgara or seed-eating hopping mouse, there are far more shrubs growing inside the fence (kangaroos eschew shrubbery for more delicate flowering plants). Because there are so many shrubs around, the sand does not move the same way inside the fence as it does out.
The lack of dingoes inside the fence has quite literally led to a situation where sand dunes do not develop as expansively inside the fence. This is one of those things where I feel like it’s just mind-boggling how impactful removing one part of the food chain can be, because I never could’ve predicted that no dingoes would result in impacts to mass SAND MOVEMENT.
Also of note: sheep farmers kill dingoes found inside the fence, and hang the dead bodies from the trees, as some sort of psychological warfare tactic? I am not an expert on Dingo Psychology, but personally I don’t think dingoes would necessarily be deterred by the bodies of their fallen comrades hanging from a tree, and this is one of those things that feels more like it’s an avenue for humans to display their anger about the existence of dingoes. Like, okay, you hung the dead dingo from the tree, do you feel better now, weirdo?
I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic to the sheep farmers,3 but their time is coming to a close anyway. Global warming means much of the grazing land will become too hot and arid to raise sheep on, and that’s happening sooner than we’d like to think. So all this fence fuckery will likely become less important to the constituents who keep the pressure on to maintain it in a state of good repair, and eventually we'll just have to see what happens to the shrubs and hopping mice and feral cats once the dingoes get back inside the fence.
Thank you for coming on this voyage of dingo discovery with me! To end on a cheerier note, here are some dingo facts:
Dingoes have rotating wrists, like humans! This means they’re good at climbing, a thing dogs are generally not known for.
Dingo moms will eat their dingo babies’ poo. I could not find a reason for this, just that they do it. Fun!
One of the main things that eats dingo pups: snakes. Australia is a fearsome place.
They mostly eat meat, but have been known to eat fruit, seeds, nuts, and whatever else is available.
Dingoes did eat a human baby one time - this You’re Wrong About episode is so detailed and compassionate.
Sources:
In the shadow of the fence: the dingo fence has transformed the environment in surprising ways
Ecological damage caused by dingo fence can be seen from space
If you’re a paying subscriber still, I do apologize for continuing to take your money during this long absence. What happened was: I had 4 different jobs in the course of 12 months, and I moved twice, and then I got Covid for the first time and then that became pneumonia and then I broke my ankle. To be fair those last three things happened very recently and can’t really account for months of absence, but I am still feeling very sorry for myself about it so I want it on the record.
All that to say, I intend to write more regularly now that I have a bit of room to breathe again, and a job I enjoy that pays a living wage, but if you cancel your paid subscription I wouldn’t blame you one bit. And I also will never check the subscriber stats to find out, because I am too fragile. So I’ll never even know!
What I don’t get is why sheep farmers don’t mind kangaroos eating the greenery they ideally would like for their sheep to be eating. Maybe they see it as a trade-off worthy of having no dingoes.
This is a little bit of a lie…I do feel unsympathetic! Sorry! That’s just the vegetarian in me!