University of New England professor Gisela Kaplan said numbers of the pure bred native dog were rapidly declining as the wild dogs were killed off by farmers or interbred with feral dogs.

Kaplan said Australians often saw dingoes as fierce predators responsible for attacks on livestock in rural areas which were in fact mainly carried out by feral domesticated dogs or dingo/dog hybrids.

"This kind of mauling is never dingo work," Kaplan told Australian Asscoiated Press. "They kill to feed, they don't kill to play."

Kaplan, the co-author of a book about dingoes called Spirit of the Wild Dog, said they were often shot for attacking livestock even though research showed they preferred to eat kangaroo.

She said long-term plans needed to be put in place to protect the breed, which is believed to have been introduced to Australia by Aborigines thousands of years ago.

"The indiscriminate killing of dingoes has been a favoured response for too long," she said.

Her comments followed publication of a leaked government report this week that warned that thousands of Australian animal species were threatened with extinction.

The government's Biodiversity Audit warned that nearly 3,000 biodiversity systems in the country were under threat and about half of them were already damaged beyond repair.

SPACE.WIRE