Pumbah the dingo comes to Canberra to help challenge myths dogging the carnivore

‘We are going to have to learn, sooner or later, how to coexist with nature and with animals’ … Pumbah, an alpine dingo, visits Parliament House in Canberra. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

A dingo called Pumbah entered Australian parliament this week in an effort to persuade the country’s lawmakers they have been persecuting his species based upon a myth and mistruth.

Pumbah, who journeyed from the foothills of Victoria’s Macedon Ranges, was ushered through a side entrance to parliament on Thursday while a group of his human allies strode through the main foyer. Scientists, Indigenous people and lifelong dingo warriors, they travelled from opposite ends of the continent, from far north Queensland, through coastal New South Wales and central Victoria to be there.