Dingoes Have Changed the Actual Shape of the Australian Desert

Stretching across some of the most remote, arid places on Earth is one of humanity’s largest built objects: the “dog fence,” a nearly 3,500-mile-long barrier erected to keep wild dingoes away from the sheep that graze on some of Australia’s most populated regions.

Up close, the fence isn’t much to look at: four feet high or so, made out of chickenwire, lying like a long metal snake across the red sand of the desert. But it’s responsible for a newly discovered ecological phenomenon. By keeping dingoes out of the southeastern part of the country,