by David Owen
Specially designed PVC tube traps reduce the risk of captured devils damaging themselves and can be efficiently disinfected after each use. (Courtesy Nick Mooney)
As soon as the devil and human connection was made, the story blossomed. In the wake of their $1.6 million loss, oyster farmers demanded that spraying cease until it could be proved that the biocides weren’t to blame. The forestry industry reacted with anger. DFTD project manager Alistair Scott released a cautious statement saying that no clinical evidence linked the spraying to the devil disease. Environmental health expert Dr Mark Donohoe queried why atrazine, banned in most countries for its known ability to damage DNA and cause tumours in laboratory mice, was still commonly used in Tasmania.
At this time too, the separate but related Fox Taskforce steering committee began to fracture over its decision to issue 1080 poison to farmers to bury baits on their properties. The Tasmanian Conservation Trust pulled out of the committee on two grounds: farmers were not specialised bait layers; and they were being used to cover up budget restraints.
Thus the politics of environmental management, a running sore for almost the life of the state, once again threatened to overwhelm the real business at hand: saving the Tasmanian devil.
Finally, the saga of the disease included a strange and poignant coincidence in the death of Jim Bacon, the premier of Tasmania since 1998, who succumbed to cancer in June 2004. Bacon was a man who could take a joke. In 2001, at a lavish function at Hobart’s Cascade Brewery, which uses the thylacine on its labels, he launched The Tragedy and Myth of the Tasmanian Tiger, a CD-ROM created by filmmaker Steve Thomas. The making of it had necessarily required Thomas to work closely with staff of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, which holds the world’s largest collection of thylacine material and data. David Pemberton, as zoology curator at the Museum, presented Bacon with a wrapped gift after he had made his launch speech. The hundred or so guests watched as Bacon unwrapped a large framed photograph. Digitally manipulated, it was a fresh roadkill scene: a four-wheel-drive vehicle with a Tasmanian government licence plate and a dead thylacine.
Bacon laughed, but the message clearly struck home. Two years later, on 2 September 2003, he spoke at a ceremony remembering the loss of the thylacine. A day earlier, Nick Mooney had gone public over the drastic state of the devil disease and the lack of government help to combat it. Ironically, therefore, Bacon found himself at a thylacine remembrance function saying, ‘My government will not allow the Tasmanian devil to become extinct. That would be a tragedy. The devils are not going the same way as the thylacine did. That is too horrible a thought to contemplate.’28
After his speech Bacon conferred with Pemberton and then Mooney. He wanted confirmation that the extinction threat was real. They assured him it was. He then asked what funds were required, and was told of a program already budgeted for but not yet funded. Exactly one month later the existing $40 000 of government funding became the $1.8 million package.
The Tasmanian devil is a highly profitable, lucrative animal, an iconic wild species. It may recover without human assistance, but it is to be hoped and expected, that no effort will be spared in saving the world’s largest marsupial carnivore.
NOTES
Chapter 1
1 Letter of Morton Allport to Curzon Allport, March 1863. Allport Library & Museum of Fine Arts.
2 Definitive studies were carried out by Lars Werdelin and documented in his ‘Some Observations on Sarcophilus laniarius and the evolution of Sarcophilus’, Records of the Queen Victoria Museum, vol. 90, 1987.
3 Scott, Alan, pers. comm., 1 July 2004.
4 ibid.
5 Guiler, Eric, The Tasmanian Devil, Hobart, St David’s Park Publishing, 1992, p. 10.
6 The Mercury, 2 September 2003, p. 2.
7 Nowak, Ronald M., Walker’s Mammals of the World, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, p. 64.
8 Nick Mooney email to David Pemberton, 8 November 2004.
9 Wilkie, A. A. W., as told to Osborn, A. R., ‘Tasmanian Devils[:]
Three Interesting Imps’, in Reminiscences From the Melbourne Zoo, Melbourne, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1917, pp. 58–9.
10 Taylor, James, comp., Zoo[:] Studies From Nature, Sydney, James Taylor, 1920, p. 107.
11 Lord, Clive, ‘Notes on the Mammals of Tasmania’, in Royal Society of Tasmania[:] Papers and Proceedings, 1918, Hobart, The Society, 1918, p. 45.
12 Lord, Clive, ‘Existing Tasmanian Marsupials’, in Royal Society of Tasmania[:] Papers and Proceedings, 1927, Hobart, The Society, 1927, p. 22.
13 The publication was The Children’s Newspaper and the story was reported in The Mercury, 17 February 1962, p. 9.
14 Farrand, John Jr. (ed.), The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of Animal Life, New York, Chanticleer Press, 1987 [Sixth Printing, 1988], p. 27. There is no author credit.
15 www.jonahcohen.com/jersey_devil. This website and many others are devoted to information about the State of New Jersey and its famous devil.
16 Lord, Clive, A Synopsis of the Vertebrate Animals of Tasmania, London, Oldham, Beddome & Meredith, 1924, p. [ii].
17 Cameron, Max, pers. comm., June 2004.
18 Fleay, David, ‘The Tasmanian or Marsupial Devil—Its Habits and Family Life’, The Australian Museum Magazine, vol. X, no. 9, 15 March 1952, p. 277–8.
19 Linnean Society of London, Transactions, vol. 9, 1808. ‘Description of two new Species of Didelphis from Van Diemen’s Land. By G. P. Harris, Esq. Communicated by the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. K. B. Pres. R. S., H. M. L. S. Read April 21, 1807’, reproduced in Letters of GP Harris 1803–1812, edited by Barbara Hamilton-Arnold, London, Arden Press, 1994, p. 90.
20 Fleay, David, op. cit., p. 279.
21 Wilkie, A. A. W., op. cit., pp. 58–9.
22 Grzimek, Bernhard, Australians[:] Adventures with Animals and Men in Australia, translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn, London and Sydney, Collins, 1967, p. 278.
23 Fleay, op. cit., p. 278.
24 Guiler, op. cit., p. 18.
25 www.dpiwe.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf, p.7, accessed 30 December 2003.
26 Grey, Lionel, pers. comm., 10 July 2004.
27 ABC Radio, PM, 2 December 2002. www.abc.net.au/pm, accessed 8 March 2004.
28 www.web.macam98.ac.il, accessed 10 March 2004.
29 Fleay, op. cit., p. 277.
Chapter 2
1 www.rokebyprimary.tased.edu.au/NAIDOC Aboriginal students at Rokeby Primary School in southern Tasmania, with their teacher Grant Williams, created this story in the tradition of Dreamtime legends as a way of discovering more about their Aboriginal history through stories. The story formed part of the School’s participation in NAIDOC (National Aboriginal Islander Day Observance Committee) Week 2003, a yearly celebration providing an opportunity for Australia’s Indigenous people to display their culture and heritage to the rest of the Australian community.
2 Long, John, Archer, Michael, Flannery, Timothy, and Hand, Suzanne, Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea: One Hundred Million Years of Evolution, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, p. 32.
3 ibid., p. 55.
4 Australian Museum Online, accessed 4 January 2004. www.amonline.net.au/webinabox/fossils 5 Long et al., op. cit., p. 55.
6 www.environment.sa.gov.au/parks/naracoorte, accessed 5 January 2004.
7 Wroe, Stephen, ‘The Myth of Reptilian Domination’, Nature Australia, Summer 2003–2004, p. 59.
8 Morrison, Reg, and Morrison, Maggie, The Voyage of the Great Southern Ark, Sydney, Lansdowne Press, 1988, p. 292.
9 Tasmanian evidence is instructive here. La Trobe University academic Dr Richard Cosgrove, a specialist in late Pleistocene archaeology, examined over 48 000 bones from middens and cultural sites across southwest Tasmania. They were overwhelmingly made up of Bennett’s wallaby and wombat, the major Aboriginal food items for over 20 000 years. Just fourteen devil bones were found. That rules out any notion of overkill and instead emphasises good harvest
ing management. Cosgrove’s work also found no evidence of human predation on megafauna, suggesting that they were extinct before human arrival at the southeast tip of the Australian continent and therefore succumbed to something other than overkill.
10 Based on analysis of a limestone hammer by Charles Dortch, Curator of Archaeology at the Western Australian Museum, using enhanced radiocarbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence methods.
11 Gill, Edmund D., ‘The Australian Aborigines and the Tasmanian Devil’, Mankind, 8 (1971), p. 59.
12 Noetling, Fritz, ‘The Food of the Tasmanian Aborigines’, Papers & Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 1910, p. 281.
13 Flood, Josephine, Archaeology of the Dreamtime, Sydney, Collins, 1983, p. 62.
Chapter 3
1 Jones, Menna, ‘Convergence in Ecomorphology and Guild Structure among Marsupial and Placental Carnivores’, in Jones, Menna, Dickman, Chris and Archer, Mike (eds), Predators with Pouches: The Biology of Carnivorous Marsupials, Collingwood, Vic, CSIRO, 2003, p. 290. She cautions, however, that the success rate of such attacks is unknown.
2 ibid.
3 ibid.
4 Ewer, R. F., The Carnivores, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973, p. 76.
5 Lord, Clive, ‘Existing Tasmanian Marsupials’, op. cit., 1927, p. 22.
6 www.wolverinefoundation.org, accessed 30 January 2005.
7 ibid.
8 ibid.
9 ibid.
10 www.napak.com/honey_badger, accessed 31 January 2005.
11 www.awf.org/wildlives/183, accessed 30 January 2005.
12 ibid.
13 ibid.
14 ibid.
15 Eisenberg, J.F., The Mammalian Radiations, Chicago, Ill., University of Chicago Press, 1981.
16 Menna Jones interview with David Owen, 1 October 2004.
17 ibid.
18 Strahan, Ronald (ed.), The Mammals of Australia, rev. edn, Chats-wood, Reed Books, 1995, p. 60.
Chapter 4
1 www.abc.net.au/science/scribblygum, accessed 30 December 2003.
2 Fleay, David, ‘The Tasmanian or Marsupial Devil—Its Habits and Family Life’, op. cit., pp. 279–80.
3 Gilbert, Bill, In God’s Countries, Omaha, University of Nebraska Press, 1984, p. 8. Gilbert earned considerable respect as a popular conservation and natural history writer and he travelled to Tasmania specifically to write the eighteen-page chapter on devils which appears in this book. He spoke to a number of people who could readily claim to know much about the devil.
4 Pemberton, David, ‘Social Organisation and Behaviour of the Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii’, thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Science Faculty, Zoology Department, Hobart, University of Tasmania, July 1990, p. 123. A total of 3788 traps were set in ten sessions for individual devil identification, trapping 328 males and 353 females, 554 and 515 times respectively. Most devils became trap-shy but a few were caught many times. In respect of feeding, wallaby and wombat carcasses ‘were placed in a paddock approximately fifteen metres from the edge of the tea-tree scrub running along a creek in the south of the study area. A hide was positioned fifteen metres from the carcass. The carcasses were always c. twenty kilograms in weight and were tied with thin wire to a stake embedded in the ground to prevent animals dragging them away. Lights were set up on the left and right hand side of the carcass to reduce the amount of light shining directly at the observer or the animals which usually approached the carcass from the bush edge . . . No animals left the carcass site when lights were switched on, and soon after intense interactions began there were animals moving within the white light, around the hide, and through the hide under the observer’s chair’ (p. 111).
5 ibid., p. 117. The ‘yip’ was identified subsequent to the completion of the thesis. Thylacines also had a ‘yip’ call.
6 ibid., p. 164.
Chapter 5
1 Harris, George Prideaux, ‘Description of two new Species of Didelphis from Van Diemen’s Land. By G. P. Harris, Esq. Communicated by the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. K. B. Pres. R. S., H. M. L. S. Read April 21, 1807’, in Linnean Society of London, Transactions, vol 9, 1808. X1, reproduced in Letters of GP Harris 1803–1812, edited by Barbara Hamilton-Arnold, London, Arden Press, 1994, p. 90.
2 Gould, John, Mammals of Australia, 1863, quoted in Joan M. Dixon (ed.), The Best of Gould’s Mammals, Sydney, Macmillan, (rev. edn) 1984, p. 44.
3 Meredith, Louisa Anne, Tasmanian Friends and Foes: Feathered, Furred and Finned; A Family Chronicle of Country Life, Natural History, and Veritable Adventure, Hobart, J. Walch & Sons, 1880, pp. 63–5.
4 The island’s Indigenous people were subject to near-genocide. Within 30 years of white settlement the nine tribes had been decimated through armed conflict, introduced diseases and dispersion. Billy was William Lanne, the last full-blood Aboriginal male, whose body was mutilated after death as part of a grisly conflict for possession between Tasmania’s Royal Society and the Royal College of Surgeons in England. Truganini became celebrated as the last full-blood Tasmanian Aborigine. She died in 1876 and her skeleton was displayed in the Tasmanian Museum for many years, then kept hidden there. The Museum returned it to the Aboriginal community in 1976 and she was finally laid to rest in a ceremony on the waters of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. Enlightened though she was in her time, Mary Roberts’ casual use of these names is a sure indicator that notions of romantic savages still beat strongly in the Empire’s bosom.
5 Roberts, Mary G., ‘The Keeping and Breeding of Tasmanian Devils (Sarcophilus harrisii)’, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1915, pp. 1–7.
6 ibid.
7 ibid.
8 Flynn, T. T., ‘Contributions to a Knowledge of the Anatomy and Development of the Marsupiala [:] No. I. The Genitalia of Sarcophilus satanicus’, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, vol. xxxv, Part 4, 30 November 1910. [Issued 1 March 1911], p. 873.
9 ibid.
10 ibid., p. 874.
11 Guiler, Eric, ‘The Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings, vol. 33, no. 4, December 1986, p. 128.
12 Lord, Clive, ‘Existing Tasmanian Marsupials’, Royal Society of Tasmania Papers & Proceedings, Hobart, 1927, p. 22.
13 ibid., p. 24.
Chapter 6
1 Brogden, Stanley, Tasmanian Journey, Melbourne, Morris & Walker for Pioneer Tours, 1948, p. 79.
2 Guiler, Eric, The Enthusiastic Amateurs: The Animals and Birds Protection Board 1929–1971, Sandy Bay, E. R. Guiler, 1999, p. 73.
3 The published results are in Guiler, E. R., ‘Observations on the Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii (Dasyuridae: Marsupiala) at Granville Harbour, 1966–75’, Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, vol. 112, 1978, Hobart, The Society, 1978, pp. 161–88. See also Guiler, E. R. and Heddle, R. W. L., ‘Observations on the Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii (Dasyuridae: Marsupiala). 1. Numbers, home range, movements and food in two populations’, Australian Journal of Zoology, 18(1), 1970, pp. 49–62.
4 Australian Wild Life: Journal of the Wild Life Preservation Society, vol. 3, no. 3, March 1958, Sydney, The Society, 1958, p. 14.
5 ibid.
6 Australian Wild Life, op. cit., vol. 4, no. 2, 1962, pp. 30–2.
7 Australian Outdoors, November 1961, Sydney, The Society, p. 36.
8 ibid., p. 37.
9 Bauer, Jack, ‘Protection That Doesn’t Protect’, Australian Outdoors, November 1961, Sydney, The Society, pp. 36–41.
Chapter 7
1 Guiler, E. R., ‘Observations on the Tasmanian Devil’, p. 169.
2 ibid., p. 177.
3 ibid., p. 183.
4 The Mercury, 9 August 1966, p. 6. The area covered a ‘fifty-mile radius’ from Tooms Lake in the east to Interlaken across the Western Tiers, and south to Swansea.
5 The Mercury, 15 January 1972, p. 4.
6 T
he Mercury, 1 July 1972, p. 3.
7 Guiler, Eric, ‘Tasmanian Devils and Agriculture’, Tasmanian Journal of Agriculture, May 1970, p. 137.
8 Launceston Examiner, 28 January 1987, p. 3.
9 Tasmanian Country, 26 June 1987, p. 2.
10 The Mercury, 6 August 1975, p. 14.
11 ‘Tasmania. Ministerial News Release No. 1521, October 27, 1984.’
12 The Mercury, 2 February 1988, p. 1.
13 The Mercury, 16 October 1985, p. 1. Pam Clarke went on to become a leading world campaigner against the practice of battery hen egg production, for which she has an impressively long record of arrests and court appearances. In the leadup to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games she gained considerable publicity for her campaign by saying that its official logo looked like ‘a sad chook’.
14 The Mercury, 17 October 1985, pp. 1–2. The B.Sc. (Hons) thesis in question: ‘The Cranial Anatomy and Thermoregulatory Physiology of the Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii (Marsupiala: Dasyuridae)’, 1984, by Syed K. H. Shah, University of Tasmania, Hobart.
15 The Mercury, 7 July 1988, p. 1.
16 The Sunday Tasmanian, 23 July 1988, p. 5.
17 Mooney, Nick, ‘The Devil you know’, Leatherwood: Tasmania’s Journal of Discovery, vol. 1, no. 3, Winter 1992, Hobart, Allan Moult, 1992, pp. 54–61.
Chapter 8
1 Virgis, Toren, interview with David Owen, 6 September 2004.
2 ibid.
3 ibid.
4 ibid.
5 Anderson, Angela, interview with David Owen, 24 January 2004.
6 www.kidszoo.com, accessed 10 April 2004.
7 The interview was conducted between 7 and 9 April in 2004.
8 Email dated 19 May 2004.
Chapter 9
1 Flynn, Errol, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Cutchogue, New York, Buccaneer Books, 1976. Typical of the larrikin style of the book, Errol also refers to his father as ‘just a tall hunk of scholarship’ (p. 19).