A crucial part of teaching kids to solve real problems is that they learn to evaluate their own work. The process is
- Find a problem
- Measure it
- Communicate your findings
- Come up with a solution
- Implement that solution
- Then measure it again to see how it works
It teaches kids to ask critical questions about their own solutions, because there’s no such thing as a perfect solution to a real problem. They ask questions like: Who does your solution help? Who does it harm? Does it actually improve the situation? How could it be better?
Instead of aiming for a perfectly correct answer that they can look up in the back of the textbook, they learn that their work won’t be perfect, and that a project isn’t done until it’s been carefully evaluated.
It seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? If you do something that’s intended to solve a problem, you check to see how well it actually solved it. Not exactly rocket science, right?
The trouble is that in the real world it’s disturbingly rare to see programs rigorously evaluated. Schools and education departments can often be found committing hard to the latest educational craze, and when that craze dies down, rather than evaluate it, they commit to the next one. Now, to be fair, it can be tough to evaluate things rigorously in the education space. You can’t exactly put the same kid in two test tubes and only change one variable… life just doesn’t work like that. So, sure, it’s tough. But it’s not impossible.
But schools and education departments are not unique here. Government programs are notoriously poorly evaluated, if they get evaluated at all. Unfortunately, governments seem to be quite good at implementing programs, but startlingly poor at checking back to see what results those programs had.
So it should have come as no surprise today when I attended the launch of 1080, to hear the artist, Matt Dunne, talking with Leesh Martion and Euan Ritchie about Dingoes, and learned that our beloved native dogs are “managed” in ways that are rarely evaluated, and in fact directly conflict with the science, as well as the experience and concerns of the First Nations traditional landowners.
I love dingoes. My son has been fascinated by them since he was tiny. We probably know more about dingoes than your average Aussie family. But I did not know that many state governments around Australia not only sanction the killing of dingoes – a native species – they actively encourage it. Indeed, South Australia aims to eliminate dingoes entirely “below the fence” by 2030. Below the dingo fence is a significant chunk of South Australia. A significant chunk of Australia, even.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know there was a dingo fence. Did you?
The dingo fence creates a separation of ecosystems with fascinating – and horrifying – results. I did not know that areas without dingoes – ie where dingoes are being hunted to extinction for being on the “wrong side of the fence” – have dramatically altered ecosystems, because they are overrun by feral cats and foxes, as well as large herbivores such as kangaroos that have no natural predators once you kill all the dingoes. The difference is so dramatic it can be seen from space. Just pause for a moment and take that in.
Zoe Kean, writing for the ABC, says “When it rains, the land on the dingo side of the fence stays greener for longer. Dingo country is more biodiverse and has more small native mammals. Even the sand dunes are differently shaped on either side of the barrier.“
Ok. So now you know that we have a sodding great fence to keep dingoes out. But did you also know that farmers inside the fence in QLD and NSW are legally required to kill dingoes on their properties? That we have taken an iconic native species and deliberately driven it to the brink of extinction, to protect sheep? And did you know that, actually, there are plenty of ways to protect sheep – including guard animals like dogs, donkeys, and alpacas – that are evidence based and highly effective?
So we are killing dingoes to solve a problem that could be solved more easily, and less cruelly, in other ways. We’re not openly saying we’re killing dingoes, of course. No, no, no. We’re killing “wild dogs”, even though the science is clear that wild dogs in Australia are almost exclusively dingoes.
I learned a lot today, but I was not taking notes, so go read the research to fact check my comments (always a good idea!). There’s so much more I could tell you about the cruelty of the 1080 baits used, the fact that we don’t even know how many baits are taken by dingoes and how many by other native species. About how we don’t even know whether it’s making any difference to the predation of sheep – because the governments appear disinterested in funding evaluation of their programs.
What we do know for sure is that Australia is enthusiastically pursuing the extinction of a beloved native species, for reasons that don’t make any sense, with catastrophic impacts on the ecosystems they are integral to.
How often do you hear people say things like “they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work”, or “there must be a good reason” ?
It turns out that there’s not always good reasons for what we do – particularly for what governments do! In fact, there are good reasons to stop doing them. Dingoes and land management, climate change, deforestation and many many more issues require us to examine the evidence – evidence we already have – and change our ways.
The only way to fix this is for us to demand evidence based policies, and to vote for people who promise them (AND then hold them to account once they’re in government!).
