Relocated Tasmanian devils wipe out penguin population
The relocation of endangered Tasmanian devils to a remote Australian island to ensure their survival from a deadly contagious cancer has backfired after they wiped out the local population of penguins.
Twenty-eight healthy Tasmanian devils were introduced in 2012-13 to Maria Island, which previously had no population of the animals, to act as ‘‘insurance’’ against the species dying out from the facial tumour disease that had spread on the mainland.
Since then, numbers have risen to more than 100, but with tragic consequences for the local population of little penguins on the 114 square kilometre island, which appear to have fallen victims to the devils’ voracious appetites.
The penguins, which once numbered 3000 breeding pairs, have now disappeared from the island, according to BirdLife Tasmania, a conservation group.
Numbers of short-tailed shearwaters have also been ‘‘eliminated’’ since the introduction of the devils, according to a paper published in the journal Biological Conservation last year.
‘‘All of the colonies of penguins once nesting around the Maria Island foreshore are gone because of the devils,’’ Eric Woehler, a convener for BirdLife Tasmania, told The Australian newspaper. ‘‘Parks and wildlife rangers went out 18 months back and couldn’t find a single penguin breeding in any of the previously known penguin colonies on the island.
‘‘So, the devils have wiped out the penguins. It’s 100 per cent. The shearwaters have also been hammered.’’
He said there ‘‘seems to be a degree of reluctance to let people know what’s going on’’.
According to the 2020 study, ‘‘because of their larger size and ability to dig, devils had greater impacts on nesting shearwaters than either cats or possums’’, which are native to the island and also predated on by the newcomers.