Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [115]
“They're rarely seen because they're nocturnal,” he added. “People usually only see their handiwork—getting into a chicken coop and killing every chicken that moves. Similar to what a fox does.” To farmers that made quolls Public Enemy Number 1. And though some farmers livetrapped the quolls and moved them to different locations, or even brought them to Trowunna, many of the barnyard raiders got shot or poisoned. “One year I knew of nineteen spotted-tailed quolls that were killed because they were getting into chicken coops. I'm trying to keep up with the killing. My job's to keep breeding and releasing them. I released thirty-seven quolls last year.”
The killing was reminiscent of the thylacine bounty. The spotted-tailed quoll population was crashing on the mainland. Once widespread, these quolls now lived in fragmented populations and had become extinct over parts of their original range. Listed as vulnerable by the Australian government and rare in Tasmania, where there was an estimated population of just three to four thousand animals, spotted-tailed quolls were still being treated as pests. The Parks and Wildlife Service had put out a fact sheet on “living with” quolls, with instructions on how to construct quoll-proof poultry coops. In cases where quolls were persistent, the fact sheet stated, “The Parks and Wildlife Service may issue permits to trap troublesome individuals for relocation. Usually these permits are only issued where someone's livelihood is threatened.” The fact sheet went on to say, “Some people do take the law into their own hands and set poisons. However, this is illegal.” Apparently, the law didn't have much teeth to it. To Androo's knowledge, no one had ever been prosecuted for illegally killing a rare quoll.
We followed Androo into an indoor quoll house. “In here, we have an old male spotted-tailed quoll,” he said. “Devils are old at five. Quolls are old at four.”
The old quoll was ginger-colored with white spots. He lay on his stomach on top of a branch with his long thick tail hanging down. His body was much larger than the female's—about three feet long compared to her twenty-five inches—and his head was heftier. When Androo changed the quoll's water, he remained on his perch and bared his long, piercing fangs.
We told Androo about our curious encounter with the man in camouflage and his reeling off of the spotted-tailed quoll's scientific name, Dasyurus maculatus.
“I know Andrew Ricketts. He's a good guy. Jackie's Marsh is an area where a lot of alternative people live, stalwarts of the conservation move-ment—forest restorers and craftspeople. It's where they want to build the Meander Dam.”
Ahhhh, this made sense. We had read about the dam project in the local newspapers. The plan was to dam a portion of the Meander River, the river we had seen the platypuses in, so that farmers could irrigate their fields. Environmentalists had been arguing that the dam was a threat to the spotted-tailed quoll, because it would flood 730 acres of the quoll's habitat.
“We've all been involved in the fight against the Meander Dam,” Androo said. “It would benefit about twenty farmers. But it would flood a stronghold for the quolls. Someone has been poisoning the dam site. They think if they get rid of the quolls then there's no argument about the dam. Ricketts might be trailing the people who are poisoning the quolls.”
So the camouflaged stranger was on the side of Dasyurus maculatus after all.
Androo said it was a shame that so few people seemed to appreciate the quoll. “A spotted-tailed quoll is the closest animal we will ever have to a thylacine. They're closely related. The difference is that the quoll is a tree dweller. You hand-rear a little quoll, and there's a stage in the development when you could fool someone into believing it is a thylacine pup. The head structure is identical.”
In a neighboring