A Queensland council is releasing dingoes onto a Great Barrier Reef island to kill feral goats that are destroying its endangered ecosystem.

The four wild dogs, two of which have already been released on Pelorus Island, will not have a chance to become pests themselves, as they have been implanted with a time-activated poison, Hinchinbrook Shire Council said.

"As a council we have an obligation as the trustees of this land, the custodians of this land, to control or eradicate pests," council Mayor Ramon Jayo said.

"We are in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and in this part of the world we take our obligations seriously."

The dingoes were fitted with tracking collars before being released on the island. ( Supplied: Dr Ben Allen )

The council manages Pelorus Island, part of the Palm Island group, which lies 15 kilometres off the coast between Townsville and Cairns.

The rugged, four-square-kilometre island is home to rare littoral rainforest that is being eaten away by 300 feral goats, the council's chief pest officer, Matt Buckman, said.

"The goats have literally taken out all the understory species of vegetation and that has allowed all the soils to be exposed and to be washed away and trampled down the mountain by goats," he said.

Mr Jayo said previous exercises — "such as trying to trap [the goats] or trying to shoot them" — had proven close to impossible because of the difficult terrain.

"We've also tried aerial shooting but the problem is there's so much vegetation up on top that we can't get a clear shot, so when the boys came up with this idea we just thought, 'Well that's perfect'," he said.

"This is nature. The dingo is a predator, the goat is the source of a dingo's affection, so we believe that, yeah, just put nature together and that'll sort out the problem."

Father-and-son dingo experts Dr Ben and Dr Lee Allen are leading the fieldwork for the council's radical dingo plan. ( ABC: Dominique Schwartz )

Father-and-son dingo experts Lee and Ben Allen led the fieldwork for the council.

Lee Allen, a senior zoologist at Biosecurity Queensland, and council officers have set traps on cattle and cane properties around Ingham in Queensland.

In addition to the two dingoes already on the island, the plan is to catch two more, have them desexed and vaccinated, then release them onto Pelorus Island for two years, to do what comes naturally — hunt and kill.

"Just like wild dogs do an absolute devastation on sheep and goats in a livestock setting, we've seen from past experience that wild dogs do an equally good job on feral goats in an island setting," Dr Lee Allen said.

Radical plan to prevent dingoes replacing goats as pest

Goats were originally released during the 1800s as food for lighthouse keepers and shipwrecked sailors, and have become a big environmental problem on islands around Australia.

In 1993, Dr Lee Allen was involved in the only other program to have used dingoes to eradicate offshore feral goats.

Sixteen dingoes were taken from a research station and released onto Townshend Island in the Defence Department's Shoalwater Bay military training area.

It took just two years for the wild dogs to wipe out 3,000 feral goats on the 70-square-kilometre island, but another 10 to 15 years to remove the dingoes, he said.

The dingoes were desexed and vaccinated before being released. ( ABC: Dominique Schwartz )

University of Southern Queensland wildlife ecologist Dr Ben Allen is recording and tagging the plant and animal life on Pelorus Island.

"The dingoes became a great expense and a big problem … for shore birds and other things on the island. We don't want that to happen here," he said.

"So the plan is [the] dingoes wipe out goats [then] we come back and humanely shoot those dingoes because they'll have tracking collars so we can find where they go.

"If for whatever reason we can't … shoot those dingoes, those little time-bombs will go off."

Dr Ben Allen is referring to the capsules of 1080 poison that have been implanted in the dogs and timed for release in two years.

"It's a back-up," he said.

"You've got to remember that the whole reason we are doing this is because we are trying to restore this island.

"The last thing we want to do is create another problem for this island."

Goats were originally released during the 1800s as food for lighthouse keepers and shipwrecked sailors. ( Supplied: Dr Ben Allen )

Dr Lee Allen said: "The most amazing thing is to see the results of this. In a few years' time you won't recognise Pelorus Island."

Hinchinbrook Council's Matthew Buckman said there was a lot to be gained from the program.

"We're going to protect so many of these islands long-term," he said.

"Once this island is successful, it will set the platform for many other island managers to follow through and carry out similar projects."

As long as they are not fed, the wild dogs are unlikely to pose any threat to day-trippers and bush campers, the council said.

Watch the full story on Landline at midday on Sunday July 24 on ABC