Australia: Road building for Eco-tourism will lead to Tasmanian Devil extinction
A tourist road to be built through Tasmania’s Tarkine wilderness is a
“death sentence” for the endangered Tasmanian devil, says a member of
the team dedicated to saving the species. Dr Colette Harmsen,
veterinary surgeon and field officer with the Tasmanian Government’s
Save the Devil Program, tonight told The Australian the road would
significantly hasten the spread of the devil facial tumour disease.
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Earlier this month, Premier David Bartlett announced support and $23
million to build a controversial tourist loop road through the
Tarkine, in the state’s north-west. DFTD – a rare communicable cancer
– has reduced the wild devil population by an estimated 70 per cent in
13 years, with disease-free areas now confined to the state’s far
west. A area of rainforest, button grass plains and wild coastal
habitats, The Tarkine is free of DFTD, but Dr Harmsen said the disease
front was “very close”, at Natone and Surrey Hills.
“The devils transmit the disease when they bite each other, so anything that
increases contact between devils is going to increase the rate of spread of the disease,” Dr Harmsen said. “Right now that area (the Tarkine) doesn’t have it (DFTD) but it is very close by and we don’t want to encourage the spread to areas like that because we don’t have any fall-back plans to slow it down. “(By building the road) we are giving the rest of the state a death sentence basically; we are saying ‘goodbye’ to the devils if we increase the rate of contact by any means.”
Her views are known to be shared by a number of government and
non-government scientists and veterinarian pathologists involved in
the fight to save the devil from extinction. Dr Harmsen said the 132km
bitumen road plan, developed and managed by the state-owned forest
company Forestry Tasmania, was a “double whammy” for devils.
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