Dingo fence has damaged sacred sites, say Aborigines

Construction of a controversial dingo fence around resort areas on Fraser Island, one of Australia's leading tourist destinations, is to continue despite objections from Aboriginal traditional owners.

The 6ft-high fence is intended to protect visitors to the World Heritage-listed island off Queensland from the 150 or so dingoes that roam its rainforests and beaches. A nine-year-old boy was killed by two dingoes on Fraser in 2001, and there has been a spate of attacks since, most recently in April last year, when a four-year-old girl was bitten.

The island is home to Australia's purest-bred dingoes, and the £360,000 fence is unpopular with some local people, who claim the animals are harmless – and with tourists, who regard them as one of Fraser's attractions. Now Aboriginal leaders have called for a halt to construction, saying that bulldozers have damaged sacred sites and burial areas.

Earlier this week, the federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, was reported to have ordered work to stop while those claims were investigated. But yesterday the Queensland government said that construction was continuing and the fence – built around townships and resorts – was nearly complete.

George Villaflor, lawyer for the local Butchella people, told The Australian newspaper that a government assessment of the cultural significance of the site had been a sham. "They basically got these [two untrained indigenous] women to walk the line and see if there were any culturally important areas," he said.

"You can't see every site, and the government called these women cultural advisers, to camouflage their flawed process – the type of assessment that was discredited years ago." Mr Villaflor said it was "disgraceful" that work was continuing, and that human remains were likely to be dug up during excavation work for a cattle grid.

Fraser, the world's biggest sand island, attracts about 300,000 tourists a year, mainly bushwalkers, fishermen and 4x4 enthusiasts, who hare along its sandy tracks and long, empty beaches. Its World Heritage listing is based on spectacular ancient dunes and other natural formations.

Dingoes are indelibly associated with Fraser and despite the numerous warnings posted around the island, visitors enjoy getting close to the animals. But it is that very closeness that is making them dangerous, according to wildlife rangers. Increasingly fearless, the dingoes hang around resort areas and campsites, where they are often given food.

Australians have always had an uneasy relationship with the dingo, a type of wild dog believed to have been introduced by Asian seafarers about 4,000 years ago. In a notorious case in the 1980s, Lindy Chamberlain claimed that her baby had been taken by a dingo near Ayers Rock, now called Uluru. She was found guilty of murder, then later exonerated – but many Australians did not believe her story until nine-year-old Clinton Gage was fatally mauled on Fraser Island seven years ago.

On the mainland, a 3,500-mile fence – one of the world's biggest man-made structures – was built last century to keep dingoes and wild dogs out of sheep-growing areas in eastern Australia.

Mindful of Fraser Island's importance to the Queensland economy, the state government yesterday declared its determination to press ahead with building work. The Sustainability Minister, Andrew McNamara, said: "I want the fences to be completed without delay."