"They usually rip the back legs out of the sheep. They tend to have a feed, but leave the sheep alive"

Left: Farmer Brian Mitchell (right) and his wife walk back to their home carrying a dead feral dog trapped on their Numbla Vale property near the Kosciuszko National Park in southern New South Wales.

PACKS of wild "superdogs" are raiding Australian farms leaving a trail of livestock carnage each year and farmers warn it is only a matter of time before the wolf-like beasts attack a person.

Australia has long battled its native wild dog the dingo, but now domestic hunting dogs have bred with dingoes to produce a larger, aggressive feral dog.

Skinned feral dogs hang from what's called a "Dog Tree" as a deterrent to other dogs on a farm in Numbla Vale near the Kosciuszko National Park in southern New South Wales.

The new breed of wild dog not only attacks livestock to feed but also to service a blood lust and has already forced one farmer off his land.

"They usually rip the back legs out of the sheep. They tend to have a feed, but leave the sheep alive," farmer Tim Russell said.

"They attack for food, but it is also a blood sport. The sheep are easy targets. They are very cruel," Russell, who runs a sheep farm adjacent to Australia's southeastern Snowy Mountains, said.

The superdogs, which have been seen in packs as large as 16, are crosses between native dingos and rottweilers and mastiffs, the latter two well known for their strength and aggression.

Dingoes weigh around 16 kg (35 pounds) and many of the super dogs are heavier at around 20 kgs (44 pounds). But some can weigh up to 60 kgs (143 pounds), farmers said.

"They are aggressive," said Winston Phillips, Rural Lands Protection board ranger at Cooma near the Snowy Mountains.

One sheep farmer forced off his farm by wild dogs in the southern state of Victoria was awarded A$108,000 in damages last year by a court which found the State government negligent in controlling wild dogs in an adjacent national park.

The Bureau of Rural Sciences estimated the stock lost to wild dog attacks each year cost farmers A$20 million.

Population explosion

Dingoes have been present in Australia for about 4,000 years ago.

Purebred dingoes were largely fenced out of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia states by a 5,614 km fence built in the middle of the last century, leaving wild dogs to dominate the southeast of the country.

The new wild dogs are the result of two centuries of interbreeding but with the explosion in hobby farms in the past decade their numbers have soared.

They can roam from 10 to 300 sq km, but most only leave the refuge of national parks, where poison baiting is limited, to raid nearby farms every few days.

While their numbers are unknown, hundreds of wild dogs are killed in southern Victoria state and neighbouring New South Wales each year. The total kill is not documented because many farmers shoot on sight and do not report the killing.

Russell, a fifth generation sheep farmer, has trapped wild dogs most of his life and has come out of retirement to help control the explosion in the wild dog population.

"There has been a huge increase in dogs across the state," he said. "I have trapped for more than 20 years, now they have put three trappers on in one area I used to handle on my own."

Endangered

An estimated A$7.0 million is spent annually trying to control wild dogs, with another A$10 million to maintain the dog fence stretching across three states.

But Australia's parliamentary secretary for the environment, Sharman Stone, told a wild dog summit in February Australia needed to eliminate wild dogs but save pure bred dingoes.

She said the existence of dingoes was at risk due to interbreeding with feral domestic dogs.

"We have moved on from a reliance on trapping, shooting, ground baiting, bounty payments ... to using new techniques like livestock guarding dogs, poison ejecting devices and toxic collars," Stone said.

But Russell, like many farmers, blames the rise in wild dog numbers largely on city-based environmentalists who prevent widespread poisoning in national parks where the dogs hide.

"We are being run by bureaucratic greenies living in Sydney. They say we are destroying the wildlife by killing the dogs but we looked after the wildlife better than they are."

For farmers, the emergence of "super dogs" has raised the fear of attack on people above other worries such as a potentially life threatening tape worm that can be passed from the canines to humans.

"Usually dogs are pretty shy of man but the type of dogs out there are bigger and bolder and less scared," said Russell.

"One once took opposition to me being in its territory and started circling with its bristles up, but I didn't wait to find out what was going on, I shot it," he said.

"Why there hasn't been an attack I don't know, when they are running in packs of six to 10 dogs." (Agencies via Xinhua)