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Wildcats and dingoes 'not worth protecting'

Traditional conservation efforts to protect the Scottish wildcat and Australian dingo may be misguided. The two have been interbreeding with their domestic cat and dog relatives for so long it no longer makes sense to preserve them as separate pure-bred animals, say two researchers.

Instead, wildcats and dingoes should only be protected if they play an important role in the local ecosystem or economy.

Domestic cats appeared in Britain at least 2000 years ago and have interbred with their wild relatives ever since. As a result, there are now two groups of wildcats. In one, cats resemble their domesticated cousins. The others have the typical wildcat features of bushy ringed tails and stripes, although no one knows how close they are to their pure-bred ancestors.

There is no simple genetic test to determine how pure-bred a wildcat is. But Mike Daniels of the University of Oxford and Laurie Corbett of the environmental consultancy Earth-Water-Life Sciences in Darwin, Australia, say that some genetic markers suggest the differences between the two groups of wildcats and domestic cats is less than those between most breeds of dogs.

Going feral

Dingoes also have a chequered past. They probably arrived in Australia with humans from Asia 4000 years ago. Since then, they have gone feral, been recaptured and bred by Aborigines, and mated with European pet dogs, again raising doubts about what constitutes a pure-bred dingo.

These uncertainties mean it is illogical to conserve the animals as if they were separate species, claims Corbett. "You can't bring [pure-bred animals] back. That would be like bringing back dinosaurs and having them run around the paddock."

Instead, he says, populations should only be protected if they play a critical role in shaping the ecosystem - by limiting numbers of prey species, for example - or have cultural or economic significance.

"Looking at an animal's function is probably a better approach," agrees Peter Fleming of New South Wales's department of agriculture. But he warns that proving an animal shapes an ecosystem is not an easy task.

Journal reference: Wildlife Research (vol 30, p 213)



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