Australian Geographic — May-June 2017

PHOTO CREDITS, THIS PAGE: DAVID MAYNARD, FROM

TASMANIAN TIGER: PRECIOUS LITTLE REMAINS

BY DAVID MAYNARD AND

TAMMY GORDON (QUEEN VICTORIA MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY PUBLICATIONS). OPPOSITE PAGE:

TASMANIAN TIGER: PRECIOUS

LITTLE REMAINS

BY DAVID MAYNARD AND TAMMY GORDON (QUEEN VICTORIA MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY PUBLICATIONS)

78 Australian Geographic

T

HE EXTINCTION OF the thylacine was the tragic

climax of a clash between Tasmania’s European

colonists and an ecosystem they seriously misun-

derstood. Conventional wisdom has it that by 1803, when

the first settlers arrived on the island, thylacines had already

been extinct on the Australian mainland for some 2000

years. Nick Mooney estimates there were about 2100 on

the island, and colonists didn’t come into contact with

them until 1805, when a pack of dogs killed one.

From then on this so-called Tasmanian wolf or hyena

instilled an irrational fear in residents, mostly arising from

their total ignorance of the animal. They saw it as a mor-

tal danger both to livestock – mainly sheep – and them-

selves. So they began savagely evicting it from its ancient

habitat – shooting, snaring, poisoning and trapping it.

By 1909 thylacines were scarce, the slaughter having

been hastened by a government bounty scheme that paid

out on 2184 carcasses. The last to be killed in the wild

was shot in 1930 by farmer Wilf Batty. The last one caught

in the wild was sold to Hobart Zoo in 1933. It died there

on 7 September 1936 and was thought to have been the

last of its kind. In 1982 the International Union for Con-

servation of Nature declared the thylacine extinct and in

1986 the Tasmanian government followed suit.

But that’s not the last chapter in this sorry saga. Nick

Mooney says it’s “entirely possible” 100 or more thylac-

ines may have survived in the wild after 1936. A 2016

study published in Australian Zoologist concludes that some

may have been around through the 1940s and perhaps

later. Since then sighting reports have continued – more

than 900 since 1936 in Tasmania and reputedly a similar

number from the mainland. Interestingly, most mainland

reports are from the south-east and far south-west.

People who report sightings come from all walks of

life and many have little prior knowledge of the creature

they say they’ve seen. Few seem to have an ulterior motive

for making a false report, such as a desire for fame, money

or to perpetrate a successful hoax. They genuinely believe

they saw a Tasmanian tiger.

This skull – photographed from different angles – and jawbones of a thylacine were donated to the Queen Victoria

Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, in 1903. The museum’s curator at the time, Herbert Scott, cut it open to

compare the animal’s brain size with that of a dog. He found it to be smaller.

Continued page 82

Farmer Wilf Batty shot a thylacine in his yard in May 1930,

believing it to be after his chickens. It was the last recorded

killing of a thylacine in the wild.