By JADA LEMOS
Staff Writer
About 3,000 years ago, Australian Tasmanian Devils died out after the appearance of dingoes in the mainland. Their numbers took another blow from a contagious form of cancer known as “Devil Facial Tumor Disease”, which killed around 90% of their population. To this day, there are only 25,000 devils in Tasmania, and there are teams currently working on repopulating their species.
As of September 10th, the teams have decided to release 26 Tasmanian devils back into mainland Australia since they died out 3,000 years ago. “In 100 years, we are going to be looking back at this day as the day that set in motion the ecological restoration of an entire country,” Tim Faulkner, president of Aussie Ark, stated. “Not only is this the introduction of one of Australia’s beloved animals, but of an animal that will engineer the entire environment around it, restoring and rebalancing our forest ecology after centuries of devastation from introduced foxes and cats and other invasive predators.”
Don Church, president of the Global Wildlife Conservation charity, said “Without Aussie Ark’s incredible work and perseverance over all these years, the recent devil reintroduction would not have been possible and instead of looking forward to the recovery of the species, we would be watching the devil slip into extinction. This is an incredible example of how to rewild our planet, bringing back the natural systems to the benefit of all life on Earth.”