Environmental Management in Tasmania: Better Off Dead? - Island Futures: Conservation and Development Across the Asia-Pacific Region - page 164

Task Force having recently been caught out by the damaging revelation that it had
been importing fox scats (droppings) into Tasmania since 2007 (Kempton 2010b ).
The program of Tasmania's Fox Eradication Task Force has been widely ridi-
culed by the public and mercilessly pilloried by cartoonists (e.g. Kudelka 2010 ).
What can be said in the Force's favour, based on their own values, is that there are
no foxes established in Tasmania, none photographed nor road-killed, and is that
not evidence of how effectively the Force has spent their $40 million or so on inten-
sive and extensive poison-baiting across the island? The baits have been meat laced
with Tasmania's poison of choice, 1080 (DPIPWE 2010 ).
The fox is an apex-predator that theoretically could occupy the biological niche
heretofore occupied by the thylacine. Foxes are not an established species in
Tasmania. This is despite, what Guiler ( 1986 :158) describes as: “several attempts
by persons of more enthusiasm than sense to introduce foxes into Tasmania,
mainly for hunting purposes”. These efforts, it appears, did not meet with
success.
The “Fox Eradication Program leader Matt Marrison … reinforced the very real
threat that foxes posed to not only this region [Kingston to Huonville, south east
Tasmania] but Tasmania as a whole” (Naidoo 2010 :39). The program “will spread
meat baits laced with 1080 poison across 3,000,000 ha of farms, woodlands and
grasslands over 5 years” (Naidoo 2010 :39). Kempton ( 2010a :22) reported that 50
out of 180 property owners in the first tranche of this baiting exercise “refused bait-
ers access to their land. Most refusals were driven by fears baits would kill dogs
and wildlife”. This toxic adventurism, with government funding assured for a
decade, may finally extinguish the faint hope for any cryptic thylacine/s that may
yet have survived the previous onslaughts against the species.
The Fox Eradication Branch of the Tasmanian Government's Department of
Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment asserts that one of their aims is
to “protect … the Tasmanian brand” (DPIPWE 2010 :1). While that may be a laudable
goal, is Brand Tasmania - think 'Pure Tasmania' - really enhanced by entrenching
the dissemination of poison baits across the island as an ongoing mode of environ-
mental management? Where is the mythical cashed-up tourist or backpacker who
is seeking the experience of a toxin-baited landscape? If these 1080 baiting pro-
grams really are enhancing Brand Tasmania then let them appear on all the tourist
promotions and brochures.
Futurability
In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions, such that the ruin of one is almost
always the foundation of another (La Rochefoucauld 1678 :Maxim 10).
The ultimate tragedy of the thylacine is that it was loathed too early and loved too
late. Replica thylacine pelts made from sheep skin by Hobart artists David Hurst
and Rebecca Kissling (Killick 2010 ) perhaps express the yearning of many
Tasmanians and others for what has been lost.