Thylacine has survived into modern era

THANK you, Erwin Boot, for your letter “Thylacine sighting gives heart” (Letters, October 17). You are so right in your assumption: “Thylacines are not plentiful but they are still about.”

My own sighting early one cool morning in March 1995 beside the Snake River in the Weld Valley about 80km south of Hobart confirmed to me the thylacine’s clear and evident survival.

Many have queried why my stance on the animal’s survival is so unrelenting, my answer being that on that day a thylacine stood within a few metres of me and because of my previous in-depth research of that animal I was in no two minds about what it was. It definitely was a thylacine and on that memorable day I joined the ranks of the fortunate few to have set eyes on a living, breathing Tasmanian tiger in the modern era.

That this unusual marsupial carnivore has so remarkably managed to defy all attempts to find it for more than 80 years (including a number of well organised, in-depth searches in recent years) is a mystery in itself.

In my handling of many hundreds of eyewitness accounts over the years since 1967, it never ceases to amaze me that not one person has so far been able to photograph the thylacine in the wild, but not for the lack of trying, despite hundreds of remote action cameras being employed in numerous areas of Tasmania for the express purpose of filming this animal.

Any surviving thylacine population would now have to be severely restricted by the tyranny of distance and lack of diversity, and yet they have somehow managed to survive against insurmountable odds. Perhaps given time we will all know, but the tiger’s chances of being extant are unfortunately now diminishing with every passing year.