Man's dog killed after police intervened because of what it looked like: 'Broke my heart'
The killing of a man's pet, has sparked outrage from Indigenous leaders about the treatment of their cultural animals.
As legend has it, there’s no bond closer than a man and his dog. But last week, a police officer decided to intervene in this sacred union, and within hours the dog was dead and the man’s partner was in tears.
Professional fisherman Liam Druery admits he’s had a colourful past, so when Queensland Police, eyed him across the street he wasn’t surprised. “I noticed a police car do a fast U-turn and I thought, here we go,” he told Yahoo News.
However, on this occasion, it was the appearance of his dog that sparked the trouble outside the post office in Weipa. The problem was it looked like a native dingo.
“My missus has gone in to get some packages, and I was standing out front by the ute with my dog. It was 36 degrees and he was hot and bothered, so I decided to just stay with him,” Druery added.
Why was Ernie the dog killed?
Two months ago, Druery saw an ad for an unwanted Kelpie X pup and took the animal home. Because it resembled a dingo, he named it Ernie in a nod to the actor.
Unfortunately for Ernie, in Queensland being a dingo is a dangerous business. Despite the animals being protected inside national parks, elsewhere the state government has declared them a biosecurity risk, and it’s illegal to move, keep, feed, give away, or sell one because the native species is seen as a threat to the multi-million dollar business of sheep farming.
After noticing Ernie's unusual appearance on October 25, Queensland police conducted a “street check”. It claims Druery admitted it was a dingo hybrid.
But Druery, who is not Indigenous or an expert in the species, disputes this. “That is lies. I never said to anyone in this town he was a hybrid. Always said exactly what I was told. Don't get me wrong I had suspicions about it,” he said.
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Are police trained in dingo identification?
Queensland Police did not respond to questions about what evidence it had that Druery’s animal was a dingo, or what training it gives officers to differentiate the species from domestic dogs. It did not respond to a request to produce body camera footage of the incident to help confirm its claims.
Druery alleges Queensland Police were aggressive and bullied him into signing a statement surrendering the dog. Druery feared he’d be arrested if he didn’t comply after he was allegedly ordered to “stop bullsh***ing”, “stop lying” and he wasn’t doing himself “any favours” arguing.
Queensland Police did not respond to these claims.
Were Traditional Owners consulted about euthanasia?
Because the Weipa Town Authority was called in to seize the animal, police say it had no further involvement in the matter. “Police were not involved in the process of euthanising the animal,” it said in a statement.
There’s an understanding that Traditional Owners are consulted before dingoes are destroyed in the town. It remains unclear whether this occurred because the Weipa Town Authority has not responded to a question about this from Yahoo News. However, some Indigenous leaders are known to be furious the dog was euthanised.
In a statement, it confirmed the dog was seized after it was contacted by police.
"Weipa Town Authority responded to a request from police to remove an illegally held wild dog (dingo hybrid) from Weipa Town on 25 October. For safety reasons, the wild dog was surrendered to Weipa Town Authority, where it was humanely euthanised in accordance with the Biosecurity Act," it told Yahoo News.
Under Queensland's 2014 Biosecurity Act, landholders including local governments have an obligation to control dingoes on their properties. However, some councils are now using "risk-based decision-making processes" to determine the level of "biosecurity risk" they pose to the region.
What happened after animal was seized?
Druery claims he pleaded with the authority and the police not to kill his dog immediately and to allow him to get it DNA tested, but this was denied. Within hours his dog was handed back to him dead inside a ziplocked black plastic bag.
Druery had been planning to go away camping with his partner that night as it was her birthday.
“She asked where Ernie was and I told her the news. She started crying and it sort of broke my heart,” Druery said. “I pretty much wiped myself out that night.”
His other dog, which had befriended the pup, has gone off its food. And there’s an empty spot on his fishing boat where Ernie used to sit.
What's the difference between a dog and a dingo?
Druery has pledged to get the animal’s genetics tested for dingo DNA, but legislation around the species is confusing.
Queensland’s Department of Agriculture did not respond to a question from Yahoo News about how it determines what constitutes a dingo versus a domestic dog, or what percentage of DNA makes an animal a dingo.
The words dingo and wild dog are used interchangeably by governments around Australia depending on the circumstance. The same animal would generally be referred to as a dingo inside a national park, and a wild dog if it ventured onto private property. DNA testing by the University of NSW, has found little evidence of hybridisation — testing across Queensland and NSW found just two animals less than 70 per cent pure.
Instead, visual profiling appears to be the only method used to determine what animals are dingoes.
University of NSW dingo expert Dr Kylie Cairns said she would like to clarify what training is being done by law enforcement to differentiate between dingoes and dogs if they are intervening in the lives of animals like Ernie. “People who don't really know what dingoes look like often can confuse some dogs or hybrids with dingoes,” she said.
“The standard of evidence for euthanising an animal, in my opinion, should be much stronger. It's quite likely [Druery’s] animal was a dingo. But I still think the government has a responsibility to ensure it follows the correct protocol and its ownership does breach the legislation before they go and summarily euthanise it.”
The Department did not respond to a question about the advice it provides to police about enforcing the act. But it said in a statement, “It can be difficult to differentiate a wild dog from a pure dingo in the field. In areas where they are not protected, livestock owners and graziers do not need government permission to prevent dingoes from attacking their livestock.
“There are many different approaches that a person may take to minimise the risks of wild dogs and dingoes to their livestock while balancing the needs of the environment and cultural requirements”.
Why are Indigenous leaders calling for dingo management change?
While it's perfectly legal to keep introduced dogs from Europe, America and Asia, keeping their native cousins is illegal. Indigenous people have kept dingoes for thousands of years, but the Biosecurity Act can force Indigenous people to act outside the law to maintain cultural bonds with the animal.
Sonya Takau is a Jirrbal Rainforest Aboriginal person and she believes there's a wider story about persecution of the dingo that needs to be told.
“Australia has the worst reputation for losing its native mammals. And we’re still destroying [the mainland’s] top apex predator because of an industry… but governments still aren’t listening” she told Yahoo News.
The Department of Agriculture told Yahoo News it works with Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, local government, natural resource management groups and the Queensland Conservation Council to create a "balanced approach to dingo management", but Takau argues Indigenous leaders need to be central in the decision-making process.
She collates traditional information about dingoes on her Dingo Culture website, and along with 99 other Traditional Owners she signed last year’s National First Nations’ Dingo Declaration, which states dingoes are “family” and “deeply sacred”.
It called on authorities to work with elders on dingo management because of their cultural importance, and she is working to understand if this occurred when Ernie was euthanised.
“Why do we continue to have this ridiculous, nonsensical, abusive, lethal approach to managing a beloved native Australian animal, particularly to First Nations people?” she said.
“Does this mean that police are going to come and shoot any dingo who is a companion of Traditional Owners in Queensland?”
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