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Trio of New Yorkers follow the tiger trail to darkest Tasmania
By Margaretta Pos

THREE New Yorkers have spent the past six weeks chasing the ghost of the Tasmanian tiger, exploring the wildlife, history and future of Tasmania for a book to be published in the US.

The island's natural wonders will be extolled, while environmental issues will be woven into the narrative.

Written as a travel adventure by Michael Crewdson and Margaret Mittelbach, with illustrations by Alexis Rockman, Ghost Hunters: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger will be published next year by Villard, a division of the Random House Trade Group.

So keen was the publisher that the trio arrived within weeks of their submission being accepted, assisted by in-kind support from Brand Tasmania.

"There is huge interest in Tasmania in the US," Crewdson said in Hobart.

Mittelbach agreed, but said many people were sketchy on details.

"Not many people really know where it is -- Americans are not strong on geography -- but it's far away and sounds so exotic," she said.

"Little has been written about it in the US, but it's one of the places in the world where remnants of the ecosystems which used to cover the world still exist. And that makes it fascinating and wonderful."

Crewdson and Mittelbach have collaborated before, notably for Wild New York:
A Guide to the Wildlife, Wild Places and Natural Phenomena of New York City, published in 1997.

They have also worked with Rockman, editing a book by him and Mark Dion, Concrete Jungle: A pop media investigation of death and survival in urban ecosystems, published in 1996.

All three are fascinated by the Tasmanian tiger and the cloning project at the Australian Museum in Sydney, and were familiar with a fine specimen in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Rockman spent much of his childhood in the museum.

His mother is American anthropologist Diana Wall, and his career as an artist has hinged on the uneasy relationship between human beings and the natural world.

Add to this personal links with Tasmania. His Australian father was a member of the Rockman family that founded the Rockmans' department store chain in Tasmania. His great uncle, Irvin Rockman, was Lord Mayor of Melbourne.

"The Tasmanian tiger is one of few predators driven to extinction by human beings," Rockman said.

"Because of the prevailing Eurocentric view, no one cared about it until it was too late.

"The title of our book, Ghost Hunters, reflects the tiger's story as a hunter and the hunted, and our hunt for its ghosts, which are everywhere, even on beer cans."

via http://www.anomalist.com
and
Loren Coleman