Tourists are being warned to stay away from dingoes on a popular Australian beach after a number of incidents, including one where a tourist was bitten on the bum.
Of course, while someone getting bitten on the backside might seem quite funny at first, when you actually do a bit of digging into this, it’s a really serious problem.
The dingoes have attacked a number of people recently, including a 10-year-old who was dragged underwater and bitten by one of the wild dogs yesterday (22 June).
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It’s all going off on K’gari Island, which was previously called Fraser Island, as the wild dingo population is becoming altogether too comfortable with the humans that frequent the sandbank island for the natural beauty it has to offer.
The dingoes - or wongari, if you prefer - are giving the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) plenty of cause for concern right now, and they’ve had to put down both the dog that bit the tourist and the one that pulled the young boy underwater.
Thousands of tourists are set to head for the idyllic island during the upcoming school holidays, prompting a warning from those responsible for looking after the place.
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The French tourist was just sunbathing at Eurong on the island’s eastern side when she was bitten on the backside.
The attack, which was caught on camera, took place in April or May, before the animal went on to attack other people on the beach, including a seven-year-old boy and a 42-year-old woman.
According to the Queensland Department for Environment and Science, it was euthanised earlier this month.
Needless to say, that was the same way that the one that attacked the 10-year-old boy went, too.
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In the end, it took the boy’s 12-year-old sister to save him, leaving the youngster with puncture wounds to his arms and shoulder.
His injuries were not serious, but this is far from an isolated incident.
Darren Blake, an Indigenous ranger from the Butchulla Aboriginal Corporation, issued a warning to parents, asking them to keep kids close.
"When I see a child on their own, hair stands up on the back of my neck,” he said.
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"Just keep your kids at arm's reach and keep an eye on your food and rubbish.
"When we say keep your kids close, we mean that."
Dingoes - Blake continued - are apex predators, and people would do well to treat them as such.
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"I say to people when the wongari are walking around them, 'Would you let a big timber wolf walk around you at Yellowstone Park?' No. Same thing here - they're [like] wolves," he explained.
"They are not as big, but they are opportunists."
QPWS coastal island regional director Stephen Price added: "Dingoes can become highly habituated, they can get used to and seek out food, they can become more dominant, and the incidents start to escalate and there is an unacceptable risk to the public.
"It gets to a point where a hard decision has to be made around euthanising an all-but-healthy animal, a native wildlife.
"It's not a decision that is made lightly."
"Rangers have a lifelong passion to work in the environment and protect the native wildlife," he said.
"They put an enormous amount of effort in managing the interaction between the public and the dingoes.
"Decisions to euthanise an all-but-healthy animal does take its toll."
Tom Wood