An acceptance of unreferenced anecdotes as proof (of eastern quolls being introduced to Bruny in the 1970s) alongside cynical dismissal of substantial material evidence that has passed several reviews (of foxes in Tasmania) sits very poorly with your call to just deal with facts Mr Clarke (letters, Mercury 15th).
I presume your anecdotal proof is nobody you know remembering eastern quolls to be on Bruny before 1970.
Maybe they were rare then and simply overlooked or just never officially recorded just like much wildlife there.
DNA comparisons suggests Bruny Island quolls have been separated from mainland Tasmanian populations for a lot longer than 40 years.
I remain to be convinced eastern quolls were introduced to Bruny in the 1970s. Radical boom-bust cycles are a natural feature of eastern quoll ecology and the current boom will bust.
There are no species on Bruny that do not cope with eastern quolls and or spotted-tailed quolls and devils elsewhere in Tasmania so who’s mounting the scare campaign Mr Clarke?
Eastern quolls are not top predators on Bruny. Masked owls prey on them as can cats and diurnal birds of prey are one reason they are nocturnal. Eastern quolls are extinct on mainland Australia mainly because of foxes and will be amongst the first to go if foxes get fully established here.
If you look beyond your backyard Mr Clarke you might find you actually have an asset.
Finally, I have never been head of wildlife management and my views sometimes conflict with those of the department.
I prefer to put devils on Bruny because its a restoration and not a range extension such as Maria Island, the department’s preference, and something being assessed for years before the Tasmanian Conservation Trust showed interest.
Ian Rist
May 22, 2010 at 15:32
“If foxes get ‘fully established here”.
Are they just slightly established with the ongoing promise of eradication which then satisfies the criteria for ongoing funding?
Eradication actually means to kill a species to the point of non- existence… I would have thought we achieved that a long time ago.
The foxes appear to have stopped crapping, getting road killed and getting scratched in chicken pens…after ten years of “fox evidence” and no actual fox.
Ian Rist
May 23, 2010 at 00:05
Yes and I guess the Oglala and Hunkpapa Sioux and Northern Cheyenne would have still been in the Valley of the Little Big Horn…but there were some people by the name of Ulysses S. Grant and General George Armstrong Custer, sadly we cannot change history.
George Harris aka woodworker
May 23, 2010 at 02:11
Yes, Tigerquoll, you are so right.
We should all take remedial action before removing ourselves from this island.
We should all donate our labour to removing all the houses from Battery Point, all the buildings on the foreshore at Strahan, the old heritage huts at Cradle Mountain, and so on, so that the natural bush can re-establish itself after we have gone. Then the real Tasmania can exist as it was, and how you would prefer it to be, and those that did live here could explain to others, in where else you subsequently reside, how magical a place it is, and how good it is that no humans are present, and how important it is that no humans ever set foot there again!
hugoagogo
May 23, 2010 at 03:22
#2 Metaphorical Eden perhaps, but utter – I don’t think so.
Where are the indigenous apples and figs?
Pete Godfrey
May 23, 2010 at 12:00
Nick I am not so sure that Eastern Quolls are extinct on the mainland. It is about 20 years ago now but I lived in Northern NSW near Grafton in the mountains then and we had quolls that were identical in appearance to the one in your photo that used to come and eat our chooks. I did only see a few but they ate my chooks and I managed to get very close up looks at one in a hollow tree in the chook house and also another on a couple of years later in a woodpile.
So they are probably still surviving just not in huge numbers.
William Boeder
May 23, 2010 at 13:20
Yet these places and or islands do still exist and do so in the not too distant Indonesian Archipelago.
Yet now, with the rate of frenetic corporate dispatch these islands will soon succumb to the ravages of corporate greed, whom seek and speak of vast volumes to sell lower than its opposites to capture the major markets.
Such clever business products as those wood-chips sold in the magnitudes of millions of tonnes, these are the corporate and business proud products sought by various Asian family dynasties to uphold their decadent lifestyles.
They may even convert the ubiquitous indigenous apples and figs you speak of hugoagogo, if not surely they would burn to ashes such inferior species to the very depths of the soil?
Yes this is market forces at work, similar in kind to the actions of the mighty corporations whom even removed those then indigenous people from their intended base-product forays, by using the simple expedient of dropping explosives from helicopters, true.
A read up of the ‘such then allowed’ forestry practices occurred so regularly over yonder in Brazil, this was then considered acceptable to the corporate magnates.
(We have shareholders to think, of they would mutter to themselves?)
Those native people there will just have to make way or move-on, for they are hindering our business expansion purposes, these blasted native persons must look out for themselves and relocate away from ‘our’ land.
So today, that of the Mythical Metaphorical Eden you speak of here Hugoagogo, the remaining have still not been explored and recorded for other than their wood chipping potentials, these products that are deemed so necessary to the likes of Gunns Ltd and to the recent toppled dynasty rulers in John Gay and Robin Gray?
Ian Rist
May 23, 2010 at 20:51
Re # 6. Eastern Quolls (Dasyurus viverrinus) are not extinct on the mainland, roadkills and sightings still occur, a confirmed sighting took place in Nielson Park recently in Sydney. A roadkill was confirmed before that.
Western Quolls (dasyurus geoffroii) occur in the Kimberleys in noticeable numbers.
Spotted Tailed Quolls (Dasyurus maculatus) have some robust populations on the mainland especially where 1080 fox and dog baits have not been used.
Northern Quolls (Dasyurus halluctas) are quite prolific in some areas in the Northern part of Australia…once again where there is an absence of 1080 fox and dog baits.