Accounts of eXtinct Species

1. Accounts of eXtinct Species Tasmanian “Tiger” or “Wolf”

2. Tasmanian Wolf (Thylacinus cynocephalus) Rarity Unto Death

3. Tasmania - found by Abel Tasman in the 1640’s reports of seeing “footprints not ill-resembling the claws of a tiger” colonized by the British in 1803 (settlers, miltary men, convicts, and a lieutenant to be in charge)

4. a few decades later, sheep ranching began to dominate the landscape deaths and losses of sheep were being attributed to this “powerful and terrific” tigerish creature rather than to the packs of imported dogs which became feral, or to the convicts which escaped (penal colony) and lived off the land

5. this creature they feared was the Tasmanian wolf or tiger, Thylacinus cynocephalus - “pouched dog head” not a canid (member of the “dog” family), but a carnivorous marsupial (pouched mammal like an opossum), short legs, thick tail, stripes like a tiger based on skeletal features, not a fast runner for prolonged periods, probably lay in wait or slowly stalked prey, then pounced (sit and wait predator) was probably a solitary hunter

6. some thylacines were probably “attracted” to the sheep bounties were placed on thylacines beginning in 1830, with official “tiger men” whose job it was to kill potential sheep predators as thylacines became more scarce, bounties were raised higher, to keep killing effort high in the early 1900’s there was a sudden drop in the number killed it is believed that a distemper- like disease may have hit thealready lowered population making recovery impossible

7. habitat loss to agriculture, ranching, and humans along with predation by and competition with feral dogs, poaching, and disease led to the demise of the Tasmanian Tiger, a species never too abundant due to position as a top predator and restricted distribution government bounty on thylacines officially ceased in 1912 - they were too rare to be found with any regularity

8. the last Tasmanian wolf in captivity died on 7 September 1936 in a Tasmanian zoo two months after the Tasmanian government declared it a “protected species”

9. however, none of these sightings has ever been officially verified reports of thylacine sightings still occasionally come in the most convincing to date was a reported sighting by a Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Officer in 1995 near the town of Pyengana in eastern Tasmania

10. How can we ever know if a species is truly extinct in the wild? How long after the last verified sighting should we assume a species is extinct? Does it matter if a species is officially declared extinct? How does being a “marsupial” make it more difficult for small populations to recover from disturbances? Thought Questions