06 May 2000 Australia
Tassie holds key to tiger rebirth
By Anne Barbeliuk
Interstate scientists engrossed in reincarnating the thylacine were reminded yesterday: don't leave Tasmania off your genetic map. The world's richest diversity of preserved thylacine pups is locked in vaults beneath the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Museum vertebrate zoology curator David Pemberton yesterday said Tasmania's five pups were vital in any attempt to create a thylacine population. "While the animal might be extinct, we are still the moral keeper of the Tasmanian Tiger," Dr Pemberton said. "From that point of view Tasmania has a strong responsibility to look after the genetic material." His comments follow Thursday's announcement that high-quality DNA had been extracted from the 134-year-old preserved remains of a thylacine pup from the Australian Museum in Sydney.
Museum director Professor Michael Archer labelled the breakthrough the biological equivalent of man's first step on the moon. Eventually scientists hope to see a complete population of Tasmanian Tigers returned to the wild. Dr Pemberton said this final aim would inevitably require Tasmania's help. He said the TMAG had not yet decided whether the state's preserved pups should be used in the Sydney project. However, the museum resolved to give first preference to the Australian Museum if other laboratories were vying for the genetic material. "We will consider them first but we won't necessarily hand anything over," Dr Pemberton said. Sydney thylacine cloning project coordinator Dr Don Colgan yesterday agreed the quality of Tasmania's thylacines was unrivalled. He said lines of communication had already been opened with the TMAG. "We are naturally going to be looking for Tasmania's cooperation," Dr Colgan said. "We have already indicated [to the TMAG] that we would be more than interested in taking tissue samples." Any decision on whether to release genetic tissue would be considered by the TMAG board of trustees.
Trustee member Professor Jim Reid said yesterday the board would be happy to cooperate with the cloning project "provided we can see justification in the science of any proposal that comes before us". Professor Reid said he supported the project's endeavour to map the genome of the animal, but ethical questions needed to be raised about cloning and repopulating the thylacine. He was not sure the cloning project - expected to cost at least $80 million - was worthwhile. "There are probably other things I would sooner see the science research dollar spent on," he said. He would rather money be spent on conserving endangered species than resurrecting extinct ones. The Australian Museum has only one pup from which to make clones while Tasmania has five - one female and four males. "We have the diversity here and they'll need that diversity," Dr Pemberton said. "We might be small and we might be down here but we have the material and this is still our tiger."