Hi-tech focus in thylacine hunt

WHEN it comes to Tasmanian tiger tales, Michael Moss is a true believer.

The world-renowned thylacine hunter has spent 20 years searching for the mysterious marsupial in Victoria. Footage he captured of a doglike animal scampering across a hillside in the Strzelecki Ranges 15 years ago reignited debate about whether the Tasmanian tiger was, in fact, extinct.

Now Mr Moss, together with David Chinn, has been interviewed for an as-yetunnamed international documentary on the tiger, expected to air globally in coming months.

Mr Moss said he believed dashboard cameras were the key to proving the elusive animal was still out there and multiplying.

“There has already been a claimed sighting of one in Fisheries Rd, Devon Meadows [in Melbourne’s south-east], a few years ago,” Mr Moss said.

“And I’ve got footage of what I believe is one crossing a paddock in the Strzelecki Ranges, near Wilsons Promontory.

“Most reports have been of animals near or crossing roads. With the advent of dashboard cameras in cars, I think we will see some concrete evidence before much longer.”

Melbourne man Mr Chinn doesn’t need convincing.

He said he saw a tiger when he was working as an assistant lighthouse keeper at Cape Otway in 1973, after it was shot by the lighthouse keeper.

“It was lying on the grass as dead as mutton. I had few doubts about what it was, but the keeper didn’t want to go down that road,” he said.

Mr Moss, 49, said the tigers were extinct in Tasmania, but not in Victoria and shipments of Tasmanian animals to Victoria in 1910-15 for conservation reasons could have included tigers.

The thylacine has been officially extinct since 1986.