'Fence will save sheep industry'

In a 45 minute presentation to the minister on Tuesday evening the producers said the sheep industry was being decimated by a growing wild dog problem.

Dominic Burdon, Macsland, Longreach, said a preliminary study had shown the 1400km fence could cost about $13 million and secure about 8 million hectares of country best suited to sheep and wool production.

Mr Burdon said while community consultation was still to be carried out across the region, the sheep industry was a significantly greater economic driver than cattle in western Queensland.

"Sheep and wool have a 30 to 40 percent higher gross margin than cattle," Mr Burdon said.

"The key is in having lambings of more than 75pc and being able to take those lambs through to joining.

"We need to control dogs to the point they are not having an economic impact on the sheep industry."

Mr Burdon said dogs were also having an impact on cattle.

"If there are no sheep there is no doubt the dogs will catch up with cattle," he said.

The meeting was told some cattle producers in the Quilpie district had stopped breeding calves because of dog attacks.

Mr McVeigh is in Longreach for a meeting to discuss $5.6m allocated by the Federal Government to Queensland as drought relief funding to control feral animals.

Mr McVeigh said he wanted to discuss where and how the funding would be spent. However, the terms of the funding preclude it being used to construct fences to control feral animals.

Mr McVeigh said he also wanted to talk about the obligations all

landholders had to comply with the control of wild dogs as a class 2 pest.

In addition, time would be devoted to how fencing could be used to manage wild dogs, he said.