Hi Andrew,
You are right of course, Foxes do have an extremely broad diet but in areas
where Parma Wallabies have survived there are good numbers of Dingoes but no
Foxes. One such location is the Gibraltar Range National Park in Northern
NSW. I have never seen a Fox there despite them being abundant at lower
altitudes nearby. Some years back when the Park was heavily baited for
Dingoes and the Dingo population crashed, in came the Foxes. Luckily the
Dingo numbers recovered and the Foxes disappeared.
Despite this anecdote some CSIRO forest scientists dismiss the link between
Dingoes and Foxes but I suspect that their sampling methodology may have
been structured in a way that masked this association, and Dingoes don't
always totally exclude Foxes.
It is also interesting that at places like Gibraltar Range National Park,
where Dingoes and Parma Wallabies co-exist, the Spotted-tailed Quoll is also
common.
Regards
Greg Clancy
|