06 Jun 2000 Australia: Tas
Search for Tasmanian tiger not over yet.
By Catherine Chisholm
The elusive Tasmanian tiger is still alive and well, says tiger researcher Col Bailey. And champagne will be cracked if he finally proves it. Millionaire entrepreneur Ted Turner must have shared his enthusiasm when he offered a $100,000 reward for evidence of the tiger 15 years ago, an offer since withdrawn. Mr Bailey, of Maydena, on Tasmania's south coast, spends his retirement researching and searching for the tiger, a pursuit not common these days. "I know it's there, I just can't prove it," Mr Bailey told AAP. "(I do it) just to prove it to the world because so many people ridicule you." The last known Tasmanian tiger was captured in 1933 and died at the Hobart Zoo on September 7, 1936. "Many say that was the last tiger on earth," Mr Bailey said. "Of course that's a lot of rubbish because there's been at least 1,000 sightings around Tasmania." And as for cloning, well that was simply a "lot of rubbish", he said.
In April a team of scientists from the Australian Museum found enough DNA to embark on the cloning process which has put Australia at the forefront of trying to reverse extinction. DNA was extracted from a Tasmanian tiger pup which had been bottled in alcohol 134 years ago allowing scientists to undertake the $80 million project. Mr Bailey said that with the huge cost and only five per cent chance of success, it would take a long time to happen, if at all. "I'm no scientist but I think this is a pipedream, it's a long shot," he said. So, he will continue to look for signs of droppings and footprints and "absolute proof" of a creature he believes he first sighted in South Australia in the late 1960s. "I saw this dog-like animal from around 400 metres ... I thought it looked strange, the way it walked, the shape of it, it was just unusual," he said. "There were marvellous footprints everywhere." The tiger numbers dwindled when legislation was introduced to state parliament in 1888. By 1909 bounties had been paid on 2,184 tigers, because they were believed to have killed graziers' sheep.
These days Mr Bailey believes there are between 100 and 200 left in Tasmania, with sightings in Gippsland and south-east Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Tasmanian parks and wildlife officer Nick Mooney said people from around the world had unsuccessfully searched for evidence of the tiger in the past few decades. He said situations such as Ted Turner's reward were "just a gimmick" and that if there were any tigers left it would be under 10. "There's no shortage of people who believe they've seen them. Whether or not they have is completely different." Mr Mooney said there had not been a serious search for the tiger for 12 years, despite the current report of one sighting each month. "It's highly unlikely there are any left. There's no hard evidence that one existed after 1936," he said. Mr Mooney said scientists should concentrate on cloning animals in danger of extinction, not the tiger which would then be turned into a "freak show" in captivity. As for Mr Bailey, he has a long-standing agreement with the Tasmanian museum - that if he finds a tiger he will throw it on the desk and the champagne will be cracked.