Australia's largest, most famous island is also a wonderland of lost wildlife, Tasmania.
Tasmania is a relatively unspoilt and unique island located 240 kilometres off the south
east corner of mainland Australia.
Most of 44% of Tasmania's environment is protected in world heritage areas, national parks and reserves.
Tasmania has long been free of its famed Tasmanian tiger, dingo or fox, but it's the last sanctuary
for some other remarkable animals, the world's largest marsupial carnivore, the Tasmanian devil.
Tasmanian devil is a unique creature, first of all it occurs only on the island of Tasmania,
which become extinct everywhere else in other parts of Australia.
It is a marsupial, so it carries the young in its pouch just like a kangaroo, but interestingly
it's a carnivore and the food for a Tasmanian devil essentially is other than animals.
It's a scavenger fulfilling much the same role as the hyena does in Africa.
The species has endured hundreds of years of torture, starting in the early 1800s when
they were hunted to the point of extinction by European settlers, and now their species
is facing the biggest threat to date, devil facial tumour disease.
The poor Tasmanian devil population has been crashing due to a unique disease, it's in
fact a contagious fatal cancer, and the numbers have dropped in 1995 from about 130,000 in
the wild and we perhaps have lost 75% of us, only perhaps 30,000 wild Tasmanian devils
remain. Every devil that has contracted the disease so far that's been studied has died
and it's a very serious problem for the species.
With the species facing extinction, the devils need all the help they can get, but will the
help come from the same people who have a history of hunting and killing these animals?
John Hamilton is the director and founder of the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park on
the Tasman Peninsula.
We essentially work with healthy Tasmanian devils and their role is to breed healthy
devils with as wide a genetic base as possible for possible future release into the wild,
to keep those wild stocks of Tasmanian devils going.
Tasman Peninsula, in the southeast corner of Tasmania, is probably most famous for
its isolation, and in the 1800s it was considered perfect for setting up one of Australia's
first prisons. With the help of the Narrow Necks of Land or Ifmuses at Eagle Hawk Neck,
the guards would line the coast with savage dogs, creating an inescapable border.
Now the same geography is still in use, but this time the inmates are healthy Tasmanian
devils, keeping disease devils out of the region.
By putting a specific set of gates at the access bridge at a canal on the way to a little
town called Danali, then those gates which will be operated and closed at night, open
the traffic on headlight sensors, but essentially it will stop wild disease devils crossing
into the region at night, thus we are creating a Tasmanian Devil Super Sanctuary. The best
solution for us is to isolate as many healthy Tasmanian devils as possible, that will give
us time to find some scientific solutions, which maybe decades away.
Once upon a time, many Tasmanians thought the devils as little black so-and-sos. That
has changed now. Even the most hard-nosed people in the country who previously regarded
devils as a threat, people who persecuted the Tasmanian devils, now believe we must
save the species. I think metaphorically there's a little bit of Tasmanian Devil blood running
through the veins of every single Tasmanian. For us to lose the Tasmanian Devil is not
an acceptable result.
If you think we've reached this point, we have reached the end.
