The Dingo Debate

The Dingo Debate explores the intriguing and relatively unknown story of Australia’s most controversial animal – the dingo. Throughout its existence, the dingo has been shaped by its interactions with human societies. With this as a central theme, the book traces the story of the dingo from its beginnings as a semi-domesticated wild dog in South-east Asia, to its current status as a wild Australian native animal under threat of extinction. It describes how dingoes made their way to Australia, their subsequent relationship with Indigenous Australians, their successful adaption to the Australian landscape and their constant battle against the agricultural industry. During these events, the dingo has demonstrated an unparalleled intelligence and adaptable nature seen in few species. The book concludes with a discussion of what the future of the dingo in Australia might look like, what we can learn from our past relationship with dingoes and how this can help to allow a peaceful co-existence. The Dingo Debate reveals the real dingo beneath the popular stereotypes, providing an account of the dingo’s behaviour, ecology, impacts and management according to scientific and scholarly evidence rather than hearsay. This book will appeal to anyone with an interest in Australian natural history, wild canids, and the relationship between humans and carnivores.

In an epoch when environmental issues make the headlines, this is a work that goes beyond the everyday. Ecologies as diverse as the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean coast, the Negev desert and the former military bases of Vietnam, or the Namib desert and the east African savannah all have in common a long-time human presence and the many ways people have modified nature. With research covering countries from Asia, Africa, and Australia, the authors come together to ask how and why human impacts on nature have grown in scale and pace from a long pre-history. The chapters in this volume illumine specific patterns and responses across time, going beyond an overt centring of the European experience. The tapestry of life and the human reshaping of environments evoke both concern and hope, making it vital to understand when, why, and how we came to this particular turn in the road. Eschewing easy labels and questioning eurocentrism in today’s climate vocabulary, this is a volume that will stimulate rethinking among scholars and citizens alike.

Ecocritical Concerns and the Australian Continent investigates literary, historical, anthropological, and linguistic perspectives in connection with activist engagements. The necessary cross-fertilization between these different perspectives throughout this volume emerges in the resonances between essays exploring recurring concerns ranging from biodiversity and preservation policies to the devastating effects of the mining industries, to present concerns and futuristic visions of the effects of climate change. Of central concern in all of these contexts is the impact of settler colonialism and an increasing turn to indigenous knowledge systems. A number of chapters engage with questions of ecological imperialism in relation to specific sociohistorical moments and effects, probing early colonial encounters between settlers and indigenous people, or rereading specific forms of colonial literature. Other essays take issue with past and present constructions of indigeneity in different contexts, as well as with indigenous resistance against such ascriptions, while the importance of an understanding of indigenous notions of “care for country” is taken up from a variety of different disciplinary angles in terms of interconnectedness, anchoredness, living country, and living heritage.

Dingo Bold is a thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between people and dingoes. At its heart is Rowena Lennox's encounter with a dingo on the beach on K’gari (Fraser Island), a young male she nicknames Bold. Struck by this experience, and by the intense, often polarised opinions expressed in public conversations about dingo conservation and control, she sets out to understand the complex relationship between humans and dingoes. Weaving together ecological data, interviews with people connected personally and professionally with K’gari’s dingoes, and Lennox's expansive reading of literary, historical and scientific accounts, Dingo Bold considers what we know about the history of relations between dingoes and humans, and what preconceptions shape our attitudes today. Do we see dingoes as native wildlife or feral dogs? Wild or domesticated animals? A tourist attraction or a threat? And how do our answers to these questions shape our interactions with them? Dingo Bold is both a moving memoir of love and loss through Lennox's observations of the natural world and an important contribution to wider conversations about conservation and animal welfare. "Combining natural history, Indigenous culture, folklore, memoir, and environmental politics, this is an elegantly written and affectionate tribute to Australia's most maligned and least understood native animal." Jacqueline Kent "Fuelled by empathy, curiosity and passion, and informed by research, data and observation, this moving and compelling book speaks to the heart and to the head. Rowena Lennox poses questions about our relationship with dingoes — and our role in the natural world — that are as bold and lively as her subject." Debra Adelaide

This book offers novel theoretical responses to the question of how laws and institutions shape the human-wildlife relationship.

New insights into the changing human attitudes towards wild nature through the depiction of wolves in human culture and heritage. Few animals arouse such strong opinion as the wolf. It occupies a contested, ambiguous, yet central role in human culture and heritage. It appears as both an inspirational emblem of the wild and an embodiment of evil. Offering a mirror to different human attitudes, beliefs, and values, the wolf is, arguably, the species that plays the greatest role in shaping our views on what nature is or should be. North America and, more recently, Europe have witnessed a remarkable return of the grey wolf (Canis lupus, and its close relative the Eurasian wolf, Canis lupus lupus) to eco-systems. The essays collected here explore aspects of this recovery, and consider the history, literature and myth surrounding this iconic species. There are chapters on wolf taxonomy, including the coywolf, the red wolf, and the many faces of the dingo. We also meet the Tasmanian wolf and encounter Nazi Werewolves from Outer Space. The book explores the challenges of separating fact from fiction and superstition, and our willingness to co-exist with large carnivores in the twenty-first century. Biologists, historians, anthropologists, cultural theorists, conservationists and museologists will all find riches in the detail presented in this wolf collection.

Wild animals form an integral component of the human leisure experience. They are a significant part of the leisure industry and are economically valuable entities. However, as sentient beings, animals also have rights and welfare needs, and, like humans, may also have their own leisure desires and requirements. This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the rights and welfare of humans and wild animals as the two relate to one another within the sphere of leisure studies. It examines a wide array of animals, such as wolves, elephants, dolphins and apes, in a diverse range of leisure settings in international locations, from captive wild animals in zoos, hunting, swimming with dolphins and animals used as educators and for tourist entertainment. This book provides a forum for future considerations of wild animals and leisure and a voice for animal welfarist agendas that seek to improve the conditions under which wild animals interact with and are engaged with by humans.

Australian Deserts: Ecology and Landscapes is about the vast sweep of the Outback, a land of expanses making up three-quarters of the continent – the heart of Australia. Steve Morton brings his extensive first-hand knowledge and experience of arid Australia to this book, explaining how Australian deserts work ecologically. This book outlines why unpredictable rainfall and paucity of soil nutrients underpin the nature of desert ecosystems, while also describing how plants and animals came to be desert dwellers through evolutionary time. It shows how plants use uncertain rainfall to provide for persistence of their populations, alongside outlines of the dominant animals of the deserts and explanations of the features that help them succeed in the face of aridity and uncertainty. Richly illustrated with the photographs of Mike Gillam, this fascinating and accessible book will enhance your understanding of the nature of arid Australia.