Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [152]
6. Day Of rHe DeaD
P. 56, LL. 5–11. One of the few sad things: “Help! There Is Livestock on the Road,” Cradle Mountain & Lakes District Visitor Gazette, vol. 1, edition 1 (2002), p. 10.
P. 61, LL. 30–32. “the Tasmanian devil ”: Barbara Triggs, Tracks, Scats and Other Traces: A Field Guide to Australian Mammals (South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 52.
P. 63, LL. 5–7. “For many people who visit”: Triggs, Tracks, p. v. This quote is from the book's foreword by Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe.
7. tHe ROaD tO tIgeRVILLe
P. 74, LL. 8–24. The recent sighting: Nick Mooney, “Tasmanian Tiger Sighting Casts Marsupial in New Light,” Australian Natural History, vol. 21, no. 5 (Winter 1984), pp. 177–180. Used by permission of Nick Mooney. In 2004, Nick Mooney reflected on the intensive search for the thylacine following Hans Naarding's reported sighting in 1982:
In retrospect, the search was as thorough as the available technology and resources allowed, especially considering we chose to be discreet. Carnivores make extensive use of the area's many vehicle tracks which were muddy for months at a time, legitimizing the focus on such sites.
But an almost inescapable problem in finding footprints was the abundance of Tasmanian devils. This “omnipresent” species uses tracks and roads and is attracted to all manner of carnivore lures, following scent trails and quickly devouring carcasses. In these circumstances, the odd thylacine print or scat could easily be overlooked, distorted, or obliterated by devil (and wallaby) “noise.” (Nowadays we would make extensive use of DNA scat analysis and the much better automatic digital cameras.)
Devils are still abundant in the area but this might not last for long. An epidemic is devastating devil numbers and is likely to eventually turn up in the Northwest. This Devil Facial Tumor Disease might make conditions ideal for the recovery of any remaining thylacines, both drastically reducing competition for food and dens and likely predation on thylacine pups. (I'm sure devils had a hand in making thylacines “functionally” if not biologically extinct: as thylacines got rare, devils became more common, and what was incidental predation of the odd pup may have become critical and unsustainable.) Ironically this disease may be the ultimate test of thylacines' extantion or extinction; a test I would much prefer never happened. Devils are every bit (if not more) the fantastic animal thylacines were, and the thought of losing them too fills me with dread.
An adjunct is that in wilderness areas we are using automatic digital cameras to assess devil populations—who knows what we might turn up.
The inland Arthur River area has changed dramatically in the past twenty years. Most of the complex eucalypt forests there in 1982 have been or are being felled and replaced by plantations, and the swamp forests are being cleared for agriculture. The consequent new roads and increased traffic have not produced anything of the quality of Hans's report, in fact almost nothing. The area was never ideal thylacine habitat, so it is possible the changes in the last twenty years were enough to tip the scales. However, there still remains much potential prey and I find it hard to believe thylacines could not persist in this landscape. I suspect, at best I was right and thylacines are not resident in the area. Or worse, I was wrong and they are simply not there—or worse still, not anywhere.
It is seventy-one years since there has been indisputable evidence of living wild thylacines and sixty-eight since any at all. There have been many searches, some unknown to the public and of excellent quality in what we think are the “best” areas. Sadly, all have come to nothing.
We are now battling a few foxes in Tasmania, a species that the devils' demise might allow to dominate the vertebrate landscape here forever. However, even a well-known species such as the