The Ecology of the Dingo in North-Eastern New South Wales I. Movements and Home Range

Abstract

During 1970-74, radio transmitters were attached to five adult and four juvenile dingoes trapped on the escarpment 50 km east ofArmidale, N.S.W. These animals were radio-tracked for a total of 515 (10-83) days, and 4058 fixes (6-1248 per animal) were obtained. Some of the animals were tracked almost continuously for periods of 100 h. The dingoes exhibited two types of movement: one, dubbed searching movement, appeared to be associated with hunting; the other, dubbed exploratory movement, was used when shifting the hunting locality and in traverses of the home range. These traverses are postulated to be related to maintaining communication between animals. The dingoes were active throughout the day with peaks of activity at dawn and dusk. The distances travelled per hour in the diurnal and nocturnal periods were equal. Activity periods were short (65% <1 hour) and interspersed with shorter rest periods. During the radio-tracking period, the average home range of adults was 2700 ha. There was evidence that this size of range did not increase over periods longer than the radio-tracking. The implications of this for control programs are discussed.