Packs of dingoes just won't be fenced in, say farmers Jon Rasheed, on his property in South Australia's north, is seeing more dingoes attacking his sheep. He says the real danger is when two or more 'hunt for sport'. SOUTH of the longest fence in the world, Jon Rasheed squints as he checks the lambs among his 60,000 head of sheep. He and his workers on the 3150sq m portion of South Australia's north owned by the Rasheed family have shot four dingoes in a little over a week and are still coming across bite marks on the lambs. Like most pastoralists, Mr Rasheed, 35, is concerned dingoes have been breeding at rates not seen in a generation, on the back of three years of heavy rainfall that has increased the amount of native prey. "The main trouble you have with the sheep is if you've got two or three dogs, they start hunting for sport," he said. You could lose 100 sheep in a night. Mr Rasheed estimates he is at least 150km from the dog fence, which stretches 5614km from Queensland's Darling Downs to the Great Australian Bight and was constructed to keep as many dingoes as possible away from sheep stations on the southern side. Greg Mifsud, head of the Invasive Animals Co-operative Research Centre's wild dog program, said dingo numbers had risen to once-in-a-generation levels in parts of South Australia, western NSW and southern Queensland, as well as in Western Australia. Small numbers of dingoes had always managed to get through the fence, he said, but now they were breeding in great numbers on the southern side. He said fewer people were living in pastoral areas, due to increased mining activity and the consolidation of sheep stations. "We're seeing major consortiums holding greater numbers of property," Mr Mifsud said, and dingo packs had "spread" across those open lands. Wool Producers Australia's president Geoff Power said the apathy many sheep owners south of the fence had previously felt was lifting with the realisation that dingoes were breeding nearby. I mean, you can't sleep at night if you know dogs are ravaging your sheep. It's very distressing. Mr Power said dingoes had also been attacking young cattle, with the percentage of male calves reaching branding age compared to females sinking to 40 per cent in parts of southern Queensland that had switched from grazing sheep due to such attacks. He is angry about the different measures used by the affected states and the Northern Territory administration to address the problem and says only a co-ordinated approach will reduce dingo and wild dog numbers. The West Australian government last month launched a small "bounty" trial paying people $100 for every dingo or other wild dog killed east of Geraldton. Cattle owners in the NT, which provides only limited baiting to kill dingoes, say they will watch the trial with interest, while the South Australian opposition wants to implement a similar scheme. The Queensland government is considering building another dingo fence in the state's central west, while SA has been expanding its aerial baiting program ahead of a new long-term strategy to manage numbers. In NSW local management plans and baiting programs are in place.