Livestock Guardian Dog Research
Livestock guardian dogs (LGDs), such as Maremmas, have been used for thousands of years across Eurasia to protect livestock from predators. Although they are proving highly successful in Australia, LGDs are still relatively uncommon—especially on larger or more complex farming properties. Research suggests that these dogs can offer benefits well beyond preventing predation, including helping farmers manage total grazing pressure and thereby supporting regenerative farming practices.
Why LDG's?
LGDs are best known for deterring predators like foxes and dingoes. However, recent studies show they also reduce the activity of large herbivores such as kangaroos and deer. These animals can place high grazing pressure on pastures and when unmanaged, their impacts can limit pasture recovery, reduce groundcover, damage riparian areas, and undermine efforts to improve soil health and water retention.
Traditional control methods—primarily exclusion fencing and lethal control—are often expensive, difficult to maintain at scale, or at odds with community expectations. LGDs offer a low-cost, non-lethal alternative that works by tapping into natural predator–prey behaviour.
The Idea
LGDs trigger strong predator-avoidance responses in kangaroos and deer. By placing LGDs in pastures, we may be able to redirect herbivores away from these areas.
In other words, LGDs may help:
- Reduce overall grazing pressure
- Improve pasture recovery
- Protect regeneration projects
- Support whole-farm and landscape-scale ecological health
Over time, reduced access to productive zones should help bring herbivore numbers into better balance with the landscape’s capacity to support them.
What the Research Involves
This project tests how LGDs can contribute to regenerative farming at the landscape scale. At participating properties, trained Maremmas will be deployed and monitored using GPS tracking collars to understand their movement patterns and range.
At the same time, resident herbivores—typically kangaroos and deer—will be monitored using a combination of methods (such as wildlife tracking camera surveys). These data will allow us to measure how kangaroo and deer activity and behaviour changes in response to the dogs.
By combining these ecological measurements with data on costs, management effort, and practical considerations, the project will build a set of evidence-based resources to help other farmers decide whether LGDs could support their own regenerative management goals.
Linda van Bommel is a researcher specialising in livestock guardian dogs (LGDs) and the resolution of human–wildlife conflict. Her work focuses on understanding how LGDs function, how effective they are in Australian farming landscapes, how they influence the broader ecological systems around them, and the benefits they provide beyond predator control.
Linda’s early research was among the first in Australia to rigorously evaluate LGD effectiveness in commercial farming environments, demonstrating that these dogs significantly reduce livestock losses from dingoes and foxes. She later expanded this work to examine how LGDs operate while protecting livestock, and how their presence influences the behaviour of both predators and large herbivores across the wider landscape.