Tassie Devil News – news from the Tassie Devil Trapping trips at Bangor

Thanks to: Stewart Huxtable, Wildlife Biologist, Save the Tasmanian Devil Program

November 2010 Trapping Trip: We trapped 37 individuals in total this trip, 4 of them with symptoms of the Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD). Trapping success was mixed. There were some reasonably good days for devil numbers on the Buffer Zone & West Bangor trap lines. These were mixed with some quiet days. All three nights on East Bangor were quiet with between 4 & 8 devils per night: compare that to the 27 we got the first day in May! There may be some trap exhaustion (a common phenomenon when regularly trapping animals) and the weather probably paid a role (a couple of windy nights). We have also discussed how the lower population on site means there is lots of food in the landscape competing with the traps for the attention of the devils.

We caught one female still with pouch young, they were pretty big & I'm not sure how they all fitted in there, another seven females were lactating i.e. they had young in the den (but not in the pouch). Two of these had symptoms of early DFTD but were released so that they could continue to rear their young; the females won't transmit the disease to their young, and we have evidence that the population will benefit more from the young surviving than it would by removing these diseased mums. We will put in a really big effort next month to catch these two mums again, and see how they are doing.

On our last day the local Parks & Wildlife Service picked up a road-killed devil on the outskirts of Murdunna. It turned out to be a 2 year old male called Sparrowhawk, another sad loss to the population. However, it was a rather bittersweet event as Sparrowhawk had a massive tumour, about the size of my hand, on his right cheek. So at least he won't be able to transmit the tumour onto any other devils.

The echidnas are out and about in force on Bangor, we saw at least one every day. And I even spotted what I think was a southern brown bandicoot bolting across a track, in the middle of the morning! We also trapped a Forest Raven in one of our wire-mesh traps, a first for the devil program!