Last chances: A bold plan to remove all infected Tassie devils is failing, according to a new study.
Credit: Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries and Water
Last resort
In addition to culling animals in the field, the Save The Tasmanian Devil project is working on a last resort insurance policy – breeding a completely isolated and genetically diverse devil population on an island that can be reintroduced later once the disease has extinguished the devil in the wild.
Michael Bode, a mathematician from the University of Melbourne, is also modelling the effects and costs of different measures to save the devil. These include fencing off large, uninfected, wild populations.
In general, Australian conservationists have not given yhe idea of large-scale fencing the credit it deserves, said Bode. "[Furthermore] logistics prohibit these removal strategies from being applied across the state," he said.
Jones acknowledged that "there are a limited range of options", but research into disease suppression techniques, a possible vaccine, and breeding natural resistance into devil populations continues.
Scientists are confident that the disease only spreads by insertion of live tumour cells into an open wound, and therefore can't be transmitted by humans moving between diseased and healthy populations.
