farmdoc's blog post number 624

Words are strange. Or rather, our use of them is. In everyday speech I never use the word parlous. Yet as I begin to write of the plight of the Tasmanian Devil, parlous pops into my mind as the perfect adjective. dictionary.com defines parlous as perilous or dangerous. Indeed it says the word dates from the Middle Ages (1350-1400) as a derivative of perilous. Whatever adjective you use, the Devil’s in desperate strife. The situation’s no better than last May when I wrote this. On the ground, anyway. But scientists in Australia and elsewhere are working on the nature of the devil facial tumour disease – from various viewpoints including epidemiology and biology, with a view to prevention and treatment. Recently an international group of researchers, including Tasmanians, published this week in the journal Science what’s probably the most major breakthrough so far. As reported in Tasmania [1], in Australia’s north island [2, 3] and overseas [4, 5], they analysed the tumour’s genetic makeup and found it originates in the Schwann nerve cells. Currently this discovery’s importance is hard to gauge. In the Science article, the researchers said that with no preventive vaccine, no diagnostic test and no treatment, the disease could wipe out the entire species in 25-35 years. Their work hopefully makes the devils’ predicament less parlous.

farmdoc's blog post number 404

Farming’s unpredictable. Sometimes things go unexpectedly wrong. And at other times unexpectedly right. But there are some farming axioms. One is ‘if you have livestock, you have deadstock’. And we do. When we find a moribund sheep or goat, Sharon and I kill and butcher it for dog meat. But when we discover a dead animal, we drag it into the bush where the Tasmanian Devils eat the carcass, bones and all. A few years ago the devils took under a week to do their job. But nowadays some carcass remains are present weeks later. That’s due to a massive fall in the devil numbers, due to the devil facial tumour disease [DFTD]. As per this ABC report, devil numbers have fallen by up to 70% in the past 13 years; and last Friday the devil’s threatened species status was changed from vulnerable (i.e. not yet classified as endangered, but numbers continue to drop) to endangered (i.e. in danger of extinction). The only three ‘worse’ threatened species categories are critically endangered, extinct in the wild and extinct. In the past 200 years, 17 Australian mammals have become extinct. And Australia has more endangered species than any other continent. I’ve no idea if the devils’ category change will improve its prognosis. Captive insurance devil populations should prevent total extinction. But as for devils in the wild, despite the research effort, I’m not optimistic.