A University of Sydney researcher, Chris Dickman, said dingoes could protect small threatened species in arid and semi-arid areas from introduced predators, particularly red foxes and feral cats.

''Putting them back out there rather than poisoning them would be a fantastic way forward for conservation,'' said Professor Dickman, a finalist in this year's Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.

Dingoes could help increase biodiversity across more than 2 million square kilometres of the continent, he said.

A CSIRO researcher, Iain Gordon, said Australia had the worst mammal extinction record in the world, with 22 mammals having died out in the past 200 years.

Professor Gordon will chair a special symposium on solutions to this ''extinction crisis'', including dingo reintroduction, at next week's 10th International Congress of Ecology in Brisbane.

The proposal is still controversial, he said. ''There will be large swathes of people, particularly in rural Australia, who are not happy with having more dingoes around.''

A University of Western Sydney dingo researcher, Brad Purcell, said the animals were a ''keystone'' species for maintaining biodiversity.

Their successful reintroduction, however, would require changes to livestock management.

During the periods when the dingoes were most likely to approach cattle or sheep, farmers would need to put livestock into safer areas, hire shepherds, or use guard dogs or alpacas.

The savings from halting dingo baiting could offset the costs, he said.