CANBERRA, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- The often-maligned dingo plays a key role in saving vulnerable Australian species from predators in the wake of natural disasters, a study released on Sunday found.
The study, released by Charles Sturt University (CSU) and Deakin University on Sunday, found that dingoes act as "guardian angels" for native wildlife following bush fires.
In order to discover how foxes, cats and other predators capitalized on burnt-off areas in their pursuit of food, researchers from the two universities used camera traps to study 21 Victorian landscapes.
"There's this idea that these predators are taking advantage of burnt areas, getting into them when all the vegetation's gone after fire, and just hunting all the native mammals towards extinction," Dale Nimmo, Associate Professor at CSU's Institute for Land, Water and Society (ILWS), told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Sunday.
Surprisingly, researchers found that the techniques used by dingoes to hunt kangaroos in the area were protecting other species.
"The big finding of the study was that foxes were actually avoiding recently burned areas in these semi-arid landscapes, and the reason was because of the higher abundance of dingoes," Nimmo said.
"You have a situation where dingoes are creating a refuge for native wildlife, particularly smaller mammals that are the preferred prey of foxes and cats, by basically selecting these landscapes so they can hunt kangaroos more effectively."
Dingoes are officially classified as pests in Australia because of their abundance but Nimmo said the classification disregarded the positive impact they can have on an ecosystem.
"The dingo has a really interesting role in Australia, because, unlike other parts of the world, we only have one large apex terrestrial predator," he said.
"Of course, there's livestock conflict related to that predator, but there's more and more evidence that the species also performs a positive function for the ecosystem.
"One of those functions that we've been seeing is that when you have larger, more stable populations of dingoes, you often end up with fewer foxes and fewer cats as well, because dingoes hunt and kill these animals and their mere presence in the landscape creates what we call a 'landscape of fear'."
