Southern Metropolitan Region
Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (12:56): (1780) My question is to the Minister for Environment. Constituents have contacted me concerned about the fate of our state’s special and genetically distinct dingo subspecies the alpine dingo, of which there are only 2940 mature animals remaining, and the Mallee dingo, or wilkerr, of which there are only 16 mature individuals left. These beautiful, uniquely adapted creatures are important to our ecosystems as apex predators, they help control feral animal populations and they are of huge cultural importance as part of First Peoples’ living cultural heritage. But under Jacinta Allan’s government Victoria’s dingoes could be the next mammalian extinction in Australia. Minister, in 2024 the government promised more than $2.5 million funding to trial control methods that would inform a transition from lethal to nonlethal dingo population control methods. My constituent wants to know what has been delivered with this funding and where the trials are.