What If Gone

Species → Dingo

Dingo

Canis lupus dingo

Rough estimates: 10,000 to 50,000 mature individuals in Australia…
Extinction risk Not Evaluated
Apex predatorScientific controversyMesopredator release
Dingo (Canis lupus dingo)
Photo: Charles J. Sharp, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What if it disappeared?

Impact Low
Depending on the region

In some regions, the absence of the dingo is associated with increased abundance of foxes and feral cats, its direct competitors for the same prey.

Documented
Detail

Letnic, M., Ritchie, E.G. et Dickman, C.R. (2012). Top predators as biodiversity regulators: the dingo Canis lupus dingo as a case study. Biological Reviews, 87(2), 390–413.

This review synthesizes several field studies in which the presence of the dingo coincides with a reduction in the abundance of red foxes and feral cats, with documented benefits for certain native small mammal species vulnerable to these introduced predators.

Conflicting studies, same scale

More recent, larger-scale studies do not find this effect and conclude that the dingo does not reliably protect native wildlife from introduced predators.

Insufficient
Detail

Several studies published since 2018-2019 (including multi-scale studies on dingoes and feral cats) do not confirm that the dingo spatially or temporally restricts feral cat activity. More than 130 peer-reviewed articles have discussed this hypothesis since the 1990s without reaching a definitive conclusion — this is a case where the literature remains actively divided, not simply insufficient.

Documentation

Last verified: August 7, 2026