Friend of creatures great and small: Don Knowler … and mates …
The sight of three dead Tasmanian devils on Tasmanian highways last week has prompted Donald Knowler to get up a Care2 petition to draw international attention to the issue.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/111/858/748/stop-driving-the-tasmanian-devil-to-extinction/
Tasmania might be known internationally as the home of the Hollywood cartoon character, Taz, based on the real-life Tasmanian devil, but the island state has another claim to fame.
It is also the roadkill capital of the world, with one animal killed every two minutes on the bitumen, among them the endangered Tasmanian devil.
With so much roadkill on view, Tasmanians joke ironically that perhaps a glass-bottomed bus tour should be added to the tourist itinerary and Donald Knowler takes up this theme in Riding the devil’s highway … to compile a field guide to what lies flattened on the bitumen.
The book is the result of a 10-year odyssey to explore the Tasmanian roadkill phenomenon. During this time Knowler has seen Tasmanian devils not only dying in increasing numbers on the highways, but afflicted by a fearful contagious cancer that has decimated numbers by 90 per cent in some areas.
The devil is the largest surviving marsupial carnivore and the author argues if measures already proven by researchers to be practical and cost-effective are not taken to reduce the roadkill toll, the devil may well follow the same road to extinction as the Tasmanian tiger.
The Blurb on the Petition …
“Taz”, the Tasmanian devil of Loony Tunes cartoon fame, is on the road to extinction.
Not only has a fearful contagious cancer decimated numbers by 90 per cent in some areas of the Australian state of Tasmania, devils are also being killed increasingly on Tasmanian roads as a tourism boom takes off.
Donald Knowler has recently self-published a book, Riding the Devil’s Highway, to draw attention to a colossal incidence of roadkill in a state dubbed “the roadkill capital of the world” by researchers.
He’s now starting a petition urging the Tasmanian Government to impose speed restrictions at night in areas which have been identified as roadkill hotspots.
Please sign the petition asking Premier Will Hodgman to act to save the devil and end a broader carnage which sees one animal killed every two minutes on Tasmanian roads, a figure that some estimates put as high as half a million a year. In the devil’s case, there is a very real concern that if the cancer does not drive it to extinction in the wild, the motor car will.
• Don Knowler’s book: Riding the devil’s highway …
• Robert Middleton USA, in Comments: So far, it appears that more of the petition signers are from outside Tasmania rather than being residents of the island. Why is that? Why don’t Tasmanians care? The answer to that question lies deeply rooted in the psyche of the people. It appears that many Tasmanians are lacking an essential, fundamental trait that most other humans throughout the world have: compassion. Is that genetic in origin, passed down from generation to generation? Too bad there isn’t a medical treatment to cure that deficiency. Sadly, once a person is past childhood, there’s nothing that can be done. Instill compassion in a child starting at an early age and there is hope. Perhaps sometime in the distant future the war against the animals can be ended.
