The RSPCA is seeking to stop dingoes being used to kill feral goats on Pelorus Island in north Queensland.

Key points: The local council is hoping the dingoes will help eradicate 300 feral goats

The local council is hoping the dingoes will help eradicate 300 feral goats But the RSPCA has described the method as "cruel"

But the RSPCA has described the method as "cruel" It wants the goats killed "in a humane way"

The animal welfare organisation will appeal to Biosecurity Queensland's ethics committee to revoke its approval for the project, according to Mark Townend, the RSPCA's chief executive officer.

"By sticking some wild dogs in a situation where those goats will be eaten, partly eaten and then left to die a horrible painful death is the wrong attitude for 2016," he said.

As reported on Landline, Hinchinbrook Shire Council this month released two male, desexed dingoes onto the Great Barrier Reef island in a bid to eradicate 300 feral goats which are destroying an endangered coastal ecosystem.

The council plans to put another two wild dogs onto the rugged, four-square-kilometre island, 80 kilometres north of Townsville.

"We have no problem with the control of feral animals," Mr Townend said.

"But we have to kill those feral animals in a humane way."

"We need to make sure that council uses sharp shooters or whatever other method, rather than this very cruel method," he said.

The dingo method was probably chosen as a cheap way to kill the goats, Mr Townend said.

Rare rainforest on Pelorus Island is being destroyed by 300 feral goats. ( Supplied: Dr Ben Allen )

Hinchinbrook Shire Mayor Ramon Jayo has said that previous attempts to trap or shoot the goats had proven "pretty impossible" because of the rough and heavily forested terrain.

Method 'could be quite a game-changer'

Island Conservation, which works with government, community and environmental groups around the world to prevent extinctions by removing invasive species, said it was closely watching the Pelorus project.

"It could be quite a game-changer in how we go about the business of removing goats from islands," said Dr Ray Nias, the director of the South West Pacific Program for Island Conservation.

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He said goats had been eradicated from places like Lord Howe Island in NSW, using what he described as expensive techniques such as helicopter and ground-based shooting.

"If there are cheaper techniques which are as effective, such as the one that's being talked about for Pelorus, this could dramatically increase the number of islands around the world we could potentially remove goats from," he said.

The dingoes are implanted with tablets which will release deadly poison in two years. ( Supplied: Dr Ben Allen )

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) said Hinchinbrook Shire should be congratulated on moving to control feral goats to protect an endangered ecosystem.

"[But] it would be preferable that it's not at the destruction of these dingoes which they are using for that," ACF Northern Programme Director Andrew Picone said.

"It seems the dingo is being treated simply as a pest control unit and not given the respect of a native species which we believe it is," he said.

Dingoes implanted with deadly pill

Hinchinbrook Council said it would shoot the dingoes when the goats were eradicated.

The animals are being implanted with tablets which will release a deadly dose of 1080 poison in two years.

The council said it was a "failsafe" to ensure the dingoes did not starve or become an entrenched pest on the island.

The only other time dingoes have been used to cull feral goats was on Townsend Island in 1993, where it took more than a decade to remove the dingoes after the goats were killed, the council said.

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Lyn Watson, the owner of the Dingo Discovery Sanctuary in Victoria, called the Pelorus project immoral and said it was unlikely to work.

She said female, not male dingoes, were the primary hunters, and that the dingoes would prefer smaller prey such as rats or ground-nesting birds rather than goats.

She said they would not eat goats on the island until they were in a "starvation situation".

Ms Watson's Australian Dingo Foundation is part of a project which has proposed reintroducing dingoes to Eynesbury forest in Victoria to control rabbits, foxes and feral cats.

When asked about the difference between the two eradication projects, both of which use dingoes to kill feral animals, she said that rabbits, foxes and feral cats were "the prey species a dingo is happy and likely to deal with".

"A dingo killing a rabbit is a very quick death, less than a minute. It's a quicker death," she said.

"But if you put them into killing goats I don't think it's going to happen — they're too big for them to waste energy on to get a feed when there's something smaller," she said.