Tasmanian Devil (18 page)

The president went on to say that his association recognised the role of native fauna and would never advocate their mass destruction; but there is little doubt that his awareness of the devil being something of its own advocate—a threat while a boon— came from Dr Guiler, who had not long before warned farmers that, ‘a permit [to destroy devils] is the last line of defence. It is a recognition of failure to keep pastures clean and free from dead animals. A buildup of devils to plague proportions can only occur if food is available. In this respect the devil takes advantage of man's untidy habits'.
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The difficulty with such accounts is in knowing what to believe. An island-wide increase would surely have been commented on elsewhere. Yet what conditions might create a purely ‘local' increase? Food supply—including dead and vulnerable sheep and cows—plays a part.

For fifteen years no more was heard of the devil as a problem, but in 1987 another population surge made it newsworthy again. Launceston's daily newspaper the
Examiner
kicked off:

Farmers down Cranbrook way are having a devil of a time, and would like the power to legally do something about it. The small east coast district is beset with Tasmanian devils, but as a wholly protected animal the ferocious little marsupials can maraud hen houses with the full protection of the law . . . A farmer's first concern is for his stock, so when someone or something is crunching his critters his instinct is to shoot first and ask questions afterwards . . . Although local folk agreed that an unusually and annoyingly large number of devils had been roaming the district lately, most thought the word ‘plague' was a bit too strong. ‘They're a pest, not a plague', said Jim Amos, of Cranbrook House, who has lived and farmed there all his 70-odd years. A story in yesterday's
Melbourne Sun
told how ‘a plague of voracious Tasmanian devils is causing havoc on the east coast' . . . Merino stud farmer Geoff Lyne claimed to have lost 75 ducks and 50 hens to the little devils in the last few months, [they] had attacked ewes during lambing and savaged a $2000 ram as it lay trapped in an irrigation ditch . . . Most farmers and townsfolk had lost chooks to the mean marsupials, but Mr Amos said that devil numbers had been up for 15 years, and he had even had them living under his house. ‘They're like possums now—they're dead on the road all the way to Swansea.' Mrs Ethel Poole, 72, of Cranbrook, said that devils had carried off all but two of her chooks. ‘They're thick as fleas around here, and they're sly things—they left me with two old boilers,' she laughed.
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In June 1987 the rural
Tasmanian Country
took a less lighthearted view:

Farmers in Tasmania's North-East are concerned about large numbers of Tasmanian devils in the area. While the devils are causing problems with livestock, the farmers are at a loss to know what steps can be taken about what they consider to be plague proportions of the wholly protected native animals . . . Waterhouse farmers, Lindsay and Lois Hall, say they can barely set foot outside their back door without running into devils. Mrs Hall said that 25 years ago she would see ‘the odd one'. However, she said, on their cattle grazing property, large numbers were now seen during the daytime and were creating havoc. Mrs Hall said the Tasmanian devils took their chickens and ducks and chewed the ears and tails off newborn calves if they were too slow to stand up. She said the devils had also been known to take a litter of pups.
    Mrs Hall said she believed the problem started when, about six years ago, large numbers of Tasmanian devils were brought to the area from Cape Portland where they were becoming a nuisance. Since then they had bred up to plague proportions. Mrs Hall believes because there were so many Tasmanian devils in the area there was a shortage of food and the animals were in poor condition and mangy. ‘I wouldn't like to see them go because they are a unique animal,' she said.
⁹

Mrs Hall's sympathy for the devil was admirable, given the dislike of it held by many in rural industries. But a few others were beginning to see a different value in the animal. A metamorphosis, dollar-inspired though it may have been, had begun back in the mid-seventies when a prominent businessman and member of the then Tasmanian Tourist Authority suggested that the devil be used to attract tourists. A sixteen-week global study trip had shown him:

The official logo of the Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service. (Used with permission of
and
© the Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service)

Tasmania is almost unheard of throughout the world, and those who know of our State, know it only because of its connection with the Tasmanian devil . . . Now is the time for us to sell, sell, sell our natural product through our tourist industry . . . Many parts of the world are suffering from the thoughtlessness that has accompanied industrial expansion, and we must do everything we can to preserve our unspoiled environment.
¹⁰

Luring tourists to a place for its wildlife is understandable. Taking an animal out of its natural habitat to attract tourists to that place is a different matter. So it was that in 1981 the Tasmanian government proposed to use a devil as a central feature of a tourism task force visiting New Zealand. The animal would then be donated to a university for scientific study. It's hard to imagine a lone devil in a cage enticing anyone to visit its homeland, and the Australian government in any event refused an export license. When this failed, donation became the next option, and attention turned to Japan.

The State government found a way around the issue, donating four devils to Osaka Zoo in 1984. According to the official ministerial news release, they were being given

to the Japanese people . . . The gift of the devils will help to cement the bonds which are being developed between Tasmania and Japan . . . The devils will be unusual but important ambassadors for our State . . . The Japanese people were fascinated by the devils, and their interest in the animals would focus attention on Tasmania. The Japanese press had already given extensive coverage to the pending arrival of the animals, describing them as the ‘strangest of all animals' and ‘with strong teeth, even to bend iron stick' . . . Osaka Zoo officials had prepared a special home for the devils, and plans also were being made for an official receiving ceremony.
¹¹

A few years later three more devils, the youthful Mo, Mavis and Mary, were presented to the Sapporo Maruyama Zoo in Japan's Hokkaido state. The Tasmanian official accompanying them on the flight, Ray Groom, the Minister for Forests, Mines and Sea Fisheries, expressed the hope that they would breed in captivity, again ‘putting Tassie in the spotlight'.
¹²
Needless to say, they didn't breed, but as a marketing ploy it worked; the devil was to become as significant as the koala as an iconic Australian image.

This new-found respect for the animal in its home state was not before time. While devils continued to be regarded as pests in some agricultural areas, public sensitivity to its status rebounded on the university, which since the time of Flynn had been associated with research for its protection. A saga which made international news in 1985 started with a front-page report in
The Mercury
headlined ‘Uni's Devilish Experiments Anger Animal Libbers':

Animal Liberationists have warned they will picket and possibly invade a University of Tasmania seminar in Hobart tomorrow to protest against experimentation on and slaughtering of at least 11 Tasmanian devils. The seminar, in the university's zoology department, has been arranged for the presentation of reports on research to ascertain the temperature regulation of Tasmanian devils' brains.
    The experiments were by an honours student working on his Bachelor of Science honours thesis. A spokesman for the Tasmanian chapter of Animal Liberation, Mrs Pam Clarke, yesterday said the experiments had been futile. Several animals which had had sensitive temperature recording instruments called thermocouples implanted in their brains had been found to be useless for the experiments because the thermocouples had corroded. ‘The devils, a part of our unique wild fauna, have been through a horrendous series of experiments,' she said. ‘We were horrified to read that many of them died during the implantation operations and also during other experiments,' she said.
    The survivors had been forced into prolonged exercise on an enclosed treadmill. An electric shock grid had been put at the rear of the treadmill ‘to encourage the animals to continue running', but this was discontinued because ‘it caused unnatural responses and also affected the chart recorder'.
    Mrs Clarke said the distressed devils had suffered substantial injuries to their tails and paws when caught between the treadmill and the boundary wall. Animal Liberation also has claimed that an unspecified number of native cats and possums have been slaughtered in university-sanctioned experiments. ‘Animal Liberation calls on the university to open its doors on the secrecy surrounding animal experimentation and appoint a member of an animal welfare organisation to its animal ethics committee,' Mrs Clarke said.
    The head of the pathology department in the university's medical faculty, Prof Konrad Muller, yesterday defended the experiments on the grounds that the research was important. A similar appraisal of another animal's brain, for instance a rabbit's, would not have given the desired results. The 11 Tasmanian devils had been ordered by Dr S. C. Nicol, of the university's physiology department, with the permission of the State National Parks and Wildlife Service. Of the 11, six had been killed and their brains immediately examined. The other five had been used in a series of tests to determine the regulation of their brain temperatures.
¹³

These allegations were not met with silence. The story continued on the front page of the next day's paper:

A senior lecturer at the University of Tasmania yesterday lashed out at what he called ignorant and ill-informed criticism of experiments . . . they had considerable scientific merit and had resulted in the discovery of a blood cell which controlled the temperature of the marsupial's brain. ‘The experiments have a number of implications to the evolution of marsupials and the evolution of mechanisms which keep body temperature constant in all mammals, and for understanding the devil's way of life,' Dr Nicol [sic] said . . . He said the results had been enthusiastically received by the
Australian Journal of Zoology
and another Australian university which was doing similar experiments . . . The experiments were part of a thesis by an honours student for his bachelor of science degree. Dr Nicol said the student was not Australian, and poor expression had made the experiments appear worse than they really were . . . Dr Nicol said that [the thermocouples] had broken in their rubber casing, and were useless for the experiment, but had not caused the animals any extra discomfort. He also dismissed claims that devils had been forced to run for unnatural periods of time on a treadmill. ‘The treadmill experiments involved only two animals which ran at 7 kmh . . . In the wild the animals keep this sort of speed up for hours.'
¹⁴

A ministerial statement defended the university, which was not surprising given that the government had issued the experiment permits in the first place. The minister curiously observed that devils were in abundance, as if that overrode questions of ethical treatment of individual animals. The issue duly blew over.

Devils weren't long out of the news, however. Tasmanians awoke one morning in July 1988 to a front-page horror headline: ‘Devil's Disease—State's Tough Little Ambassador Threatens Livestock'.
¹⁵

The discovery of the deadly animal parasite
Trichinella spiralis
for the first time in Australia—in devils—had potentially disastrous national ramifications. Not only might it migrate to livestock (pigs are the main host) or to humans (causing eye and heart damage), but both Tasmania's and the country's disease-free livestock status might also be seriously jeopardised. The infected devils all came from an area near iconic, isolated Cradle Mountain. How could a foreign parasite make its way there? Tourists? It was speculated that a devil or devils must have eaten an infected product, most likely illegally imported salami, because curing and smoking meat doesn't kill the worm.