Tasmanian Devil (27 page)

Many professionals and volunteers work in task forces combating the deadly disease.
(Courtesy Nick Mooney)

A January 2004 survey at Table Mountain near Bothwell in the central highlands, undertaken by David Pemberton, showed a population crash of between 30 and 50 per cent. Traps were set at three locations over two nights in consistently pouring rain, which flooded creeks and paddocks and made the task difficult.

Nonetheless seven devils were trapped. Two had DFTD, a third had cloacal ulcers. Pemberton's field notes of a moderately diseased female, which had pouch young, read:

The presence of disease on this animal was not obvious at first.
I noticed slight red swelling on both lips, a slight swelling on the left muzzle and pus on one swollen follicle. Inspection of the mouth revealed two lesions, one on the upper palate measuring roughly 3 cm across and one on the lower measuring 2 cm across. Both lesions were maroon-red. The red swelling on the lips corresponded with swellings on the inside of the lips, which were pale yellow and red. The distinctive markings of this animal mean I could probably identify if we follow progression of the disease.
²⁶

Fieldwork hygiene took on a new significance. Gone were the days of clunky old metal box-traps and casual handling without gloves. Newly designed PVC tube-traps had to be disinfected after each use, as well as the sacks into which devils were placed so they could be measured and inspected. Unwittingly spreading the disease through efforts to combat it would be devastating, and for this reason it was decided to dispose of sacks after one use.

Chapter 3 sets out the many and varied relationships devils have with other creatures in the wild. And although Hobart Town surveyor G. P. Harris had them eating whale blubber in 1806, even he would surely have struggled to further the marine link by associating the devil with the humble oyster. But it came about. St Helens in northeast Tasmania is the largest town on the east coast, situated on Georges Bay, in which commercial oyster farming began in 1980. Between 1997 and 2003, incidents of high mortality and shell deformity seemed to follow heavy rain. Oyster farmers contracted Sydney-based marine ecologist Dr Marcus Scammell to investigate. He concluded that rainfall introduced a damaging causal agent into the bay, and subsequent wind-drift patterns in the intertidal zone, the area where the tides rise and fall within an estuary, floated that agent into the oyster farms.

Scammell's tests revealed the agent to be tri-butyl tin, a chemical long used in marine anti-fouling paint to keep boat hulls free of growths. Although banned from use in the paint, the chemical itself was still commercially available. Scammell's finding led to it being banned altogether. He concluded that other unknown agents might also be responsible.

In January 2004 following flood rains (the same rains affecting the Pemberton Table Mountain survey), Georges Bay experienced up to 90 per cent oyster mortality. Other filter feeders—mussels and barnacles—as well as prawns, crabs, sea urchins and even non-marine frogs and insects, died in large numbers. This time Scammell's investigations led him to focus on extensive forestry aerial spraying by helicopters the previous month. One of the helicopters had crashed. Tests of biocide spills at the crash site identified alpha-cypermethrin, atrazine, simazine, chlorothalonil and terbacil. They're as toxic as they sound, and Scammell noted:

The importance of this information is not that it tells us what is at a small contaminated site, rather it tells us what is being sprayed over the vast area that these plantations cover . . . The normal environmental protection methods do not appear to be in place and no policing of the State's own Forestry Code of Practice appears to be occurring. More disturbingly, the problems associated with oysters also correlate with tumours and mortality in Tasmanian Devils. Further there appears to be a risk to human health as contamination of local drinking water supplies is also possible.
²⁷

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 harvesting 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.