Thomas Newsome

And a lot of these species were actually brought in, in a lot of cases for hunting, to allow people to go hunt these animals that they're used to going to hunt in their home countries.

So foxes, for example, were brought in so people could hunt them.

Cats were brought in, they were kept as pets and they established wild populations.

But in Australia, we've got other species that were brought in, deer, pigs, goats.

They were all brought in for some form of a purpose.

Unfortunately, all of those, the ones I've listed and many more, have created devastating effects on our fauna.

Through the years and years of trying to trap these animals, which was unsuccessful, the next step is to try and create a barrier.

So rabbit-proof fences were established to try and stop and contain the spread of rabbits throughout Australia.

It wasn't successful.

Rabbits ended up going all throughout Australia.

Eventually, they had a big dingo fence, which was once actually 9,600 kilometers long, and it's now still huge, 5,500 kilometers long.

The most visible effects are that when dingoes are removed, kangaroos in particular, their numbers explode.

They end up overgrazing the landscape, taking away the food and shelter that's available for small mammals and birds and reptiles.

So there's studies showing that you can see the effects of the dingo fence from space, both in terms of the vegetation that's there on either side, but also they've linked it to changes in dune morphology as well.

It's still a hotly debated topic, both among scientists, but also with people who are trying to run sheep or livestock operations in these areas as well.

So it would be very difficult, for example, for a politician to come out and say, we're going to tear down the dingo fence.

But they started to understand their movements and behaviors and their diet.

And that really formed the basis for understanding the ecological role, but also understanding, well, what are dingoes?

Because there's also a lot of interest in, well, what are they?