Environment
Shades of Inconvenient Truth
Nick Mooney
Time is passing, foxes are munching; sceptics create confusion and doubt and the community dithers. While this is so they have a voice but when all is obvious they will need a new currency.
There seems a little disquiet at a point in my last posting that the 2001 ‘Bosworth Fox’ contained two endemic species as prey — the long-tailed mouse and a Tasmanian pademelon.
The analyst of the gut content was Hans Brunner unquestionably one of Australia’s (if not the) top experts in identification of our mammals from hair. Let me quote from Hans’s handwritten report (very easily verified of course) to the Taskforce dated 12 Oct 2001.
“… I have examined the contents from the fox stomach and scat.
Stomach contents
Hairs, bones and teeth are of Pseudomys higginsi. Non mammalian items were feathers, insects (larvae of moth) and trace of plant fibre.
Scat:
Hairs are of a young Thylogale billardierii. There was also a small piece of feather shaft …”
Pseudomys higginsi is of course the endemic long-tailed mouse and Thylogale billardierii the now endemic Tasmanian pademelon or rufous wallaby; “now endemic” I might add mainly due to foxes on mainland Australia.
The material identified as scat was taken from the lower intestine of the fox; it was in the fox. I have no idea why it was not highlighted earlier – there seemed a fascination with “stomach content” at the time. I recently presented it because I have been scratching for ways to get people to understand the biological storm Tasmania is facing and realised it had not been publicly presented.
Every man and his dog has had this document since barely the ink was dry — via FOI and other means; I believe David Obendorf has had a copy for years and I’m sure was well aware of the wallaby since he is such an inquisitorial reader.
Time is passing, foxes are munching; sceptics create confusion and doubt and the community dithers. While this is so they have a voice but when all is obvious they will need a new currency.
“Why is more not being done?” — whats the bet?
Nick Mooney
Richmond