Devil in the detail

RESULTS from the survey of vaccinated Tasmanian devils released back into the wild reveals they are finding love in the bush, successfully breeding with wild populations. But there is also worrying news that three inoculated devils have developed small fa

EFFORTS to restore the wild Tasmanian devil population have hit a setback with three vaccinated animals released last year contracting small facial tumours.

The three were among 33 released at Stony Head in the state’s North-East last year and a lead researcher concedes more work needs to be done to ensure the disease vaccination is 100 per cent effective. But there is good news. The Wild Devil Recovery Project has revealed that animals released in the area last August are successfully breeding with wild devils, with two translocated females found with pouch joeys.

Menzies devil facial tumour disease team leader Greg Woods said they weren’t sure why the illness had developed in vaccinated animals after they initially produced an immune response.

Professor Woods said the Stony Head trial release was the only way to determine if immunisation was protective, with researchers well aware of the risk.

“Clearly the vaccination isn’t 100 per cent effective,” he said. “We will analyse the samples, try to modify the vaccination and try again.

“Our next challenge is to determine why three devils were not protected and to modify the immunisation procedure to provide full protection.

“The devils are breeding in the wild, so the numbers are going up. This minor hurdle is something we can overcome with more research.”

However, in some good news, the project also reported the first births shared between translocated devils and wild devils at Stony Head, just last month.

On the breeding success, Professor Woods said one female had four juveniles in her pouch and the other had three.

On the Forestier Peninsula, recent monitoring has also found two of the three released females from 2015 are carrying second-generation joeys, and five of five females born in the wild are also with juveniles.

Program manager David Pemberton said there were at least 43 joeys in the pouches of 12 mothers at Stony Head, 10 of which were existing wild devils and two from last year’s release.

“A population like that [at Stony Head] usually hovers around 20,” Dr Pemberton said. “With [43] babies in the pouches, if they can wean them, that’s basically going to double the population.

Dr Pemberton said there were positive breeding results from the Stony Head, Forestier Peninsula and Maria Island devil releases.

“All these sites have bred and [some] are second and third generation.

“The goal of the ... project is to get genetic diversity into the population and the numbers up to give evolution a chance.”

Monitoring also found none of 33 other devils released at Mt William in the North-East in May have been killed by cars.