Lyn and Peter Watson, founders of Melbourne's Dingo Sanctuary and Research Centre, have sent dingoes to New Zealand, and are receiving inquiries from across the globe, including the US and Japan.

The couple, who brought legal ownership of dingoes to Victoria in 1994, own a colony of 30 pure alpine dingoes at their 16-hectare Toolern Vale sanctuary north-west of Melbourne, Australia's largest premier breeding and rescue centre for dingoes.

Ms Watson, an internationally renowned hound expert and judge, said she had been inundated with inquiries from overseas zoos and wildlife parks since the Victorian Government declared the dingo a threatened species last October.

"Last year, we sent a pair to Wellington Zoo in New Zealand.

"We have orders from zoos in America, inquiries from Brazil, Japan and tentative inquiries from France," she said.

Ms Watson said a number of the overseas zoos were keen to breed the animals to help save them from extinction.

"It is our dream come true.

"The dingo will probably be in safer hands outside Australia than in it," she said.

"The sad thing is nobody knows how many dingoes we have left because no government has ordered a survey.

"But we do know it is scarce."

That scarcity has led scientists to freeze the species' DNA.

For the past two years, a veterinarian, Dr Ian Gunn, has been working with Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories to preserve the animal's genetics.

"In the past 200 years we have lost over 20 mammal species, the latest being the Tasmanian tiger," he said.

"The dingo could well and truly follow without programs like ours or that of the wildlife park to keep the species alive."

Collected specimens are stored at Monash University, along with about 100 other wildlife species, including hairy-nosed wombats and bilbies.

Dr Gunn, the co-founder of Animal Gene Storage and Resource Centre of Australia, said frozen reproductive cells could be used in breeding programs, should the population collapse.

"We can use that to transfer genetics from one population to another, whether they are in the wild or conservation," he said.

He said other states could follow Victoria in classifying dingoes as threatened species.