Born Curious, Bound to the Desert
From the time I was a child, I’ve been captivated by wildlife. I remember telling my mum that one day, I’d move to Alaska and live with ten dingoes. I was always creating my own little projects about animals, filling scrapbooks with drawings, facts and stories. That early curiosity never left me, and while I haven’t made it to Alaska just yet, my life has taken me deep into the heart of one of Australia’s remote landscapes, where I’ve dedicated myself to understanding and protecting one of our most misunderstood native species.
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My background includes a decade of work in agriculture, including time on the second-largest sheep station in Australia, Commonwealth Hill Station. I’ve also volunteered at Ballarat Wildlife Park and rescued countless native animals, especially birds injured by roadside impacts, in collaboration with local wildlife carers. My connection to wildlife has always run deep. It was in 2017, after a chance encounter with two wild dingoes while walking my dogs, that a lifelong fascination became a focused mission.
In 2020, I received my first trail camera as a gift and began camera trapping for dingoes under the name Wildlife Cams Victoria. What started with a single camera quickly grew into regular field trips, long hikes and an expanding network of cameras across the Big Desert and Wyperfeld landscape.
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In 2023, the project became Big Desert Dingo Research, reflecting its growing focus on the long-term research and conservation of Wilkerr. Today, I manage more than 60 trail cameras across remote sites throughout the Big Desert-Wyperfeld region and work collaboratively with researchers from Deakin University and other institutions.
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My fieldwork contributes to research on Wilkerr population size, genetics, social structure, behaviour and conservation. I have collected scat swabs for genetic and population research through CESAR, and contributed tissue samples to Dr Kylie Cairns for DNA testing from both the Big Desert and Mitta Mitta Valley regions, helping build a clearer picture of Wilkerr genetics, population structure and long-term conservation risk.
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In 2024, I had the privilege of scouting filming locations for Dr Daniel Hunter, a globally respected wildlife cinematographer and ecologist. Commissioned by Dingo Coexistence, our collaboration featured on ABC’s 7.30.
In 2025, I received the Australian Dingo Foundation’s Macintosh Research Grant in support of this work. That same year, Big Desert Dingo Research and the Australian Dingo Foundation submitted a nomination seeking to have the Wilkerr population assessed for listing as Critically Endangered under the EPBC Act.
In August 2026, the Australian Government formally determined Wilkerr to be a species for the purposes of the EPBC Act, allowing the population to be assessed in its own right under federal environmental law. This followed the Victorian Government’s decision in March 2024 to fully protect dingoes in north-west Victoria.
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Despite these significant steps forward, the work is far from over. Wilkerr remain a very small, geographically isolated and genetically vulnerable population, and long-term monitoring remains critical to understanding how they are changing over time.
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My commitment is to continue documenting Wilkerr through field research, long-term monitoring and public advocacy, and to ensure that decisions affecting their future are informed by evidence from the landscape itself.
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— Leesh
Founder, Big Desert Dingo Research