Primary Industries Minister Tim Mulherin said the project aimed to reduce the tens of millions of dollars a year wild dogs cost the grazing industry in lost production.

"Maremmas are a breed of livestock guardian dog that originated in central Italy and have been used for centuries by Italian shepherds to guard sheep from wolves," he said.

"Using GPS data loggers, we have been monitoring the movements of Maremmas on a Queensland property.

"The loggers record locations every 30 minutes, testing the theory that guardian dogs act like 'placebo' wild dogs, marking a territory that is avoided by wild dogs.

"We are interested in how far beyond their paddocks guardian dogs patrol and whether there are any gender or individual differences in daily movement patterns.

"If successful, the 'guardian' method would give graziers confidence in a non-lethal method of controlling wild dogs on their properties," Mr Mulherin said.

North-west Queensland sheep and cattle producers Ninian and Ann Stewart-Moore believe their Flinders Shire property, Dunluce, remained 'in sheep' only because 24 Maremmas protected them from wild dogs.

"We were losing 15 per cent of our 20,000 sheep flock each year, mostly to predation, and could no longer control the losses with regular wild dog baiting," Mr Stewart-Moore said.

"Since purchasing a team of Maremmas in 2002, our losses are now an acceptable 3 per cent and are mostly from causes other than predation.

"The outlay for all of our Maremmas was less than the cost of our losses from wild dogs each year.

"Potentially, there is a huge role for using livestock protection dogs in the grazing industry now, particularly for protecting both sheep and goats," Mr Stewart-Moore said.

Biosecurity Queensland senior zoologist Lee Allen said that he had preliminary data on how individual guardian dog movements differed, but the next phase was to monitor wild dogs in the immediate area.