It is this particular interpretation or use of the word extinction that intrigues me. Almost everything that is said about the dingo, from conservation biology to art installations, pivots around a seemingly unshakeable truth that the dingo is becoming extinct by hybridizing with domestic dogs. His words (though he is by no means alone in expressing the fear of the genetic ‘swamp’), have resonated well beyond the contested science of dingo ‘purity’ within the academy, such that panic over hybridity now characterises dingo discourse at large. As Laurie Corbett once wrote: ‘cross-breeding is common and the pure dingo gene pool is being swamped’. In fact, it is not even so much a matter of dingo death but rather dingo birth, or the queer relations of dingo and domestic/wild dog, that is the major concern. But what this usually means is not that dingoes are being pushed to the brink because of gunshot or baits (though such persecution is happening). For the last 30 years in Australia, the extinction of the dingo has been a subject of great concern.
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