Dingo fence
The Dingo Fence or dog fence (Engl. Dingo Fence or Dog Fence ) is a fence in Australia , the sheep grazing in the southeast of the continent from predators, mainly dingoes , but to protect foxes, too. It is made of wire netting , is over 180 cm high and, with a length of 5614 km in the territories of the states of South Australia , New South Wales and Queensland, is the longest uninterrupted fence and the longest structure in the world (the Great Wall of China is longer, but interrupted in some places, for example by natural obstacles). The dingo fence is repeatedly damaged by storms, floods and camels and requires extensive maintenance, organized by dog fence boards . Entire settlements like Windorah are busy with maintenance.
Location and nature
The fence is mostly on a flat desert area. It begins in the west on the cliff of Fowlers Bay at Yalata , bypasses the mining town of Coober Pedy , passes in the north of Lake Torrens and ends in Queensland in the Darling Downs before the village of Jimbour . The wire netting covers the ground on the north side of the fence about 50 cm to prevent burrowing by burrowing dingoes. The intersecting roads and railways as the Stuart Highway are at the height of the fence with soil grids ( grids secured) or spikes against crossing by dingoes on smaller roads and paths such as the Silver City HWY gates must be opened. On the north side of the fence there is a lane that is used for his maintenance.
history
Sheep do not belong to the original fauna of Australia and are much easier prey for the wild dingoes than kangaroos or emus . While the dingoes did not pose a major threat to cattle breeding, they decimated the sheep herds in the south of the continent considerably, making sheep production seem impossible at the end of the 19th century. Today, however, wool production in Australia accounts for almost 30% of the world market.
Since the 1890s, South Australian pastoralists have been building extensive fences to protect their flocks. The Dog Fence Act of 1946 made the dingo fence a government issue in South Australia.
In Queensland, protective fences against dingoes and rabbits ( Rabbit-Proof Fence ) have been built since 1860. The uniform Wild Dog Barrier Fence has been in existence since 1948 and was completed in the late 1950s.
An uninterrupted fence through Australia proved to be a viable solution over time, which the state of New South Wales added to its northern border to form a gapless barrier.
Environmental impact
There are controversial opinions about the ecological effects of the dingo fence. Sometimes the assumption is made that the dingo fence protects the “pure” dingo populations in the north from mixing with domestic dogs in the relatively densely populated southeast (see map above for mixing dingoes with other domestic dogs ). The wild kangaroos, emus and rabbits also protected by the dingo fence compete for food with the sheep, and the kangaroo and emu populations are demonstrably higher south of the dingo fence than in the north. However, it is not clear whether dingoes can actually regulate such populations.
literature
- Leith Yelland: Holding the Line: A history of the South Australian Dog Fence Board, 1947 to 2000 , Adelaide: Primary Industries and Resources South Australia 2001. ISBN 0-7590-1220-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ australiangeographic.com.au ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Kathie Riley: All quiet on the dog fence , June 16, 2009, in English, accessed April 14
- ↑ AR Pople, GC Grigg, SC Cairns, LA Beard, P. Alexander: Trends in the numbers of red kangaroos and emus on either side of the South Australian dingo fence: evidence for predator regulation? , in: Wildlife Research 27 (3): 2000, pp. 269-276
Coordinates: 28 ° 59 ′ 56 ″ S , 141 ° 0 ′ 2 ″ E