Post by ianmoone on Jul 26, 2012 3:43:14 GMT 10
Hello one and all - my first post here (So pls go easy on me). 
SurroundX mentioned in the "Southwest Platypuses" thread - that he had recently been in contact with me regarding matters appertaining to his database of extinct animals.
My background is that from years 1987 to ~ 1995 I lived and worked in the southwest town of Nannup (located in WA's southwest below Busselton and east of Margaret River) for the then Conservation and Land Management CALM agency - now known as arsonists oops I meant to say DEC, Dept Environment & Conservation as variously a Forester and Wildlife officer.
I know from my conversations thus far with surroundx, that principally most members will be interested perhaps in what I am prepared to say publicly on the record about the Thylacine in Nannup and surrounding areas.
Sure I will elaborate in future posts on what I believe are other "interesting" reports - like those about both cougars and black panthers.
For this my first introductory post however I will attempt to keep my comments to the subject of Thylacine in Lower Southwest Western Australia.
Prior to leaving Nannup and the employ of the then CALM dept - I was interviewed for the publication of a book, by 2 authors from visiting W.A. from the Eastern States - on the topic of both Panthers and The Nannup Tiger - or Thylacine.
I told them essetially exactly what I will now impart to you here in this post - because what I told them didn't happen to fit with their pre existing opinions about Thylacine in WA and the "story" they wished to sell to an unwitting public - and as a result my contribution was ignored in its entirety and I was not at all credited in the particular book.
I consider this an opportunity to set the record straight publicly in that respect because its my contention the particular book in question - which obviously I am not mentioning the title of or the names of the particular authors.
I used to have a copy of the book in my home library for some years but eventually gave it away to a keen Panther researcher.
Now - before being interviewed by these two 'twats' (coz honestly that was my summation of them afterward), I figured I would go back thru the file at the office kept of wildlife sightings and gather my thoughts as professionally as I could, since I was "going on the record" as it were and at the time was still in the employ of that department.
I separated out the reports of Panthers (which out numbered the sightings reported of Thylacines by a small percentage).
Over the ~ 8 years of my tenure as the local Wildlife officer, There were a total of 64 from memory reports of Thylacine within the 8 years or an average of about 8 a year.
That said the reports were actually clustered around I think the years 1988/9 in their distribution - and I put this down to a record low rainfall year where shortage of water was concentrating all manner of animals in close to human settlements (There were a lo of feral pigs for example coming in onto dams on the backs of farms along the Nanup Balingup road for example to access water 2 times a day due to the elevated springs further back in the Lower darling escarpment beginning to dry up...
Instead of the annual average of 1000 or 1200 mms of rain that season we went down to something like 600 or about 50% of the annual average for the area - something that had not occurred since the year 1913.
I believe that the drought was what accounted for the increase in human animal interactions as everyone basically concentrated around the remaining available water supplies both human and wild animals of all kinds.
I can state categorically that I never personally saw a Thylacine during either my 8 years with CALM in Nannup of the remaining 11 years working for myself... (Yet I did definitely see a Black Panther which I will post about separately).
To put that in context, I conducted flora surveys in the local forests because that was part of my duties since I managed the wildflower picking industry over those 200,000 square kilometers of the Nannup Forest District.
I also participated in tree marking for the Logging industry, going into state forests often virgin un-logged forest to select the trees that industry could NOT harvest (so called seed trees and fauna trees)...within the future logging coupes.
This involves walking thru virgin forest at daybreak... with spray cans of tree marking paint....and selecting the trees that industry cannot log.
I also - undertook the departments fauna trapping / surveying program locally for some years and this involved - non injurious trapping of local fauna with principally elliot tin metal traps and sheffield type wire mesh traps as well as the occasional pit traps.
During this work I was fortunate enough to work with Harry Butler OBE, who these days works for Chevron Oil managing the environmental aspects of the browse basin gas exploration project on barrow Island in WA's Pilbara region but was better known as Australia's pre eminent naturalist - who had his own TV show called "In The Wild" popular on TV when i was kid growing up.
I also participated in night time spotlight transect surveys of the forest identifying & surveying yet more native and sometimes non native animals.
Next, I spent a LOT of time out at night with the local kangaroo shooter - around the local areas - because again it was my role to monitor his activities to ensure compliance with the dept requirements at the time for humane operations and that rules with regard to age class of animals culled and assessing abundance in order to be able to issue his damage tags for the Kangaroos to be culled that were causing damage to private crops.
Lastly - while employed by CALM and for the 12 years after I left their employ - I operated a trout fly fishing business on southwest streams and brooks rivers and estuaries etc...
In short people - I lived out in that forest day and night as much as is humanly possible.
I reckon I saw pretty much everything that there was to see.
I managed to trap a Western Quoll / Quenda / Native Cat Dasyurus geoffroii for example which aren't all that common these days.
So I never saw a Thylacine in WA myself despite a total of 20 years extensive time in the forests during which I DID see wild pigs and even wild deer, unusual native animals like the Phascogale (often mistaken for a squirrel) and even a introduced platypus in the Lower reaches of the Donnelly river.
It's not like I wasn't out there looking, is what I am getting at.
Ive met plenty of "fair weather foresters" in my time - (Those who in summer can be found in the office around the air conditioner and water fountain and in winter can be found in the office around the log tile fire, but in spring or autumn when there's work to be done can't be found for love or money) but I can assure you I wasn't one of them!
So...
I never saw a Nannup Tiger,
With that out the way - approximately 64 people thought they did over the 8 years that I was taking the official report sightings/records.
One of those was even one of my "forest workers" (AWU Employees who plant trees and fight fires etc).
Now anyone who knows the southwest will tell you that Nannups famous for being the center for growing whacky tabbacky, weed, mull, call it what you will and SOME of the locals bear a strong resemblance to The Swamp People or Tasmanians even...
BUT with that said - even if I could dismiss fully 50% of the reports as being someone high on weed or off their trolley on magic mushrooms etc... there were occasions when t was tough to dismiss reports from simple down to earth local farming folks - who felt sure enough of what they had seen to put their reputation on the line and actually come into the CALM office and front the counter and fill out an official sighting report.
The "Nannup Tiger" story lost all pubic credibility one year early probably in the 1970's when a claimed sighting was made north of the town in a newly established pine plantation, and on a slow news day the press got all excited and invaded the town.... hoping to film the tiger.
Some locals who were working planting pines - fresh on holidays from the University in Perth looking to make a few extra quid, along with others local to the area who shall remain nameless - grabbed a recently shorn sheep and used a tin of tree marking paint and added a few judicious tiger stripes and let it go in the new plantation - and pointed the journos and camera men in the right direction...
After that Nannup became synonymous with the Thylacine.
Clever tourism operators (A local farming mate of mine nicknamed "Tiger Tom" named his tourist cottages "Nannup Tiger Cottages" and others started with putting up signs saying please don't geed the thylacine on roads leading out of town.
You have ti understand that when logging ceased and the CALM dept left town fully 6 Million a year of disposable wages payroll income left the town...
With only about 1000 people in the town - thats a loss for every man woman and child of $6000 a year in turnover that kept the town alive (shops hotels rates for the shire teachers required for the school police for the police station etc etc...
For a typical family of 5 that's a loss to your town of 30K business turnover a year - and if you want to replace that industry with tourism - well you better take every opportunity to capitalize on ANY media you can get - it's called survival - paying your mortgage and keeping a roof over your head!
You can hardly blame the locals for cashing in on Nannup Tiger Tails - they actually have a bested interest in keeping any rumors alive and well in the press to the best of their ability!
Scientifically now, the fossil records from Margaret River caves and those on the Nullarbore plain prove that their were once Thylacines in Western Australia.
Most research suggests that the introduction of a new predator that eats in the same critical prey weight range as Thylac9ine occurred with the introduction of the dingo to Australia across the Indonesian land bridge about 10,000 years ago, and that this STARTED the decline of the Thylacine on the mainland.
Its interesting of course to note that Tasmania being an island didn't get the dingo introduced 10,000 years ago and thus, their ground dwelling fauna is largely still in tact in comparison to mainland Australia and not surprisingly as a result records of live Thylacines were prominent from Tasmania after white settlement until culling in the early 1930's.
Back to mainland Australia - whatever vestiges (pockets) of existing thylacines might have survived the introduction of the Dingo 10,000 years before on the mainland, took a severe beating when at wote settlement another voracious predator in a similar critical prey weight range in the European fox was introduced and spread across all of mainland Australia. (up to about 18 kilos is the critical prey weight range of the European fox - IE juvenile roos and small wallabys can and are killed by choking their throat until they suffocate).
These animals along with the introduced feral cat have decimated the Australian ground dwelling native fauna, - the very food the thylacine needed to eat to survive.
I recall when doing a spotlight transect survey one night with harry Butler - he recounted upon seeing a feral cat that there are some 20 million feral cats approximately in Australia last estimates (back then) and that each one ate at least 2 native species a day!
Add in what Dingoes have eaten for the last 10,000 years (There were still wild dingoes alive and breeding on the Scott coastal plain east of Augusta during my tenure in Nannup) also what the introduced fox has eaten in the last 200 years - and it is not that hard to understand that probably what the fossil record is telling us, (There USED to be Thylacines here about 10,000 years ago) is probably correct - however as to any remnants surviving?
A small percentage ofg the reported sightings that in my estimation were genuinely true suggests that the last known specimens on the mainland are probably dieing out as I type, if they haven't already.
Tasmania is a different kettle of fish,
Without the dingo introduced 10,000 years ago, and with the fox reportedly only managing to get there in the last few years (if true) its entirely possible in my opinion and experience (I've visited the place 2 times in the last 30 years) that Thylo might persist either in the southwest wetlands as suggested Or the highlands around great lake... the western tiers etc.
In a nutshell that's my take on it.
I could be wrong (i.e. other peoples mileage may vary) but as a professional in the field in an area with a history or consistent reports over a very long time.... I believe i pretty much have it sussed.
Whats largely ignored/ missing is the cultural history of the Aboriginals to tell us MORE about decline of Thylacine... because with few exceptions - theirs is a oral history tradition much of which has been lost already.
That said - their ARE probably exceptions where the Aboriginals had a written history (petro-glyphys and cave paintings) if only we were clever enough to both locate and interpret it.
I have done a little of this myself already but even those important records are being wiped out by mining in the northwest for example - again as I type.
Example of what I am talking about.
While we are quite adept at graffiti even back in the early days of white settlement,
our aboriginal ancestors had a history of such efforts far predating us.
IF one were to study the archaeological record of such petroglyphs and Thylacine was an important part of their cultural history - on the mainland wouldn't you think they would have a record somewhere within their cave artwork and rock engravings?
I've not yet located significant works to that end but I am still looking.
The impression I am getting is that Thylacines on the mainland either were NOT a large part of the Aboriginals daily activity OR that their numbers started to dwindle rapidly once the Dingo arrived.
If it were otherwise I would expect to see a lot MORE of them depicted within the Aboriginal artworks and thus far I have inspected some almost 10,000 with so far just ONE that's possibly - either or a Thylacine or a dingo.
I'll do my best to locate a copy and post it here for you to decide for yourselves.
Thats my personal take on Thylacines after many years at this.
Like i said it won't sit comfortably with many who hope for a more positive outcome.
I'm not saying there aren't some still on the mainland but I personally haven't seen one but I've heard a lot of reports and I've also spent a lot of time both looking and trapping fauna for work and privately.
Cheers!
SurroundX mentioned in the "Southwest Platypuses" thread - that he had recently been in contact with me regarding matters appertaining to his database of extinct animals.
My background is that from years 1987 to ~ 1995 I lived and worked in the southwest town of Nannup (located in WA's southwest below Busselton and east of Margaret River) for the then Conservation and Land Management CALM agency - now known as arsonists oops I meant to say DEC, Dept Environment & Conservation as variously a Forester and Wildlife officer.
I know from my conversations thus far with surroundx, that principally most members will be interested perhaps in what I am prepared to say publicly on the record about the Thylacine in Nannup and surrounding areas.
Sure I will elaborate in future posts on what I believe are other "interesting" reports - like those about both cougars and black panthers.
For this my first introductory post however I will attempt to keep my comments to the subject of Thylacine in Lower Southwest Western Australia.
Prior to leaving Nannup and the employ of the then CALM dept - I was interviewed for the publication of a book, by 2 authors from visiting W.A. from the Eastern States - on the topic of both Panthers and The Nannup Tiger - or Thylacine.
I told them essetially exactly what I will now impart to you here in this post - because what I told them didn't happen to fit with their pre existing opinions about Thylacine in WA and the "story" they wished to sell to an unwitting public - and as a result my contribution was ignored in its entirety and I was not at all credited in the particular book.
I consider this an opportunity to set the record straight publicly in that respect because its my contention the particular book in question - which obviously I am not mentioning the title of or the names of the particular authors.
I used to have a copy of the book in my home library for some years but eventually gave it away to a keen Panther researcher.
Now - before being interviewed by these two 'twats' (coz honestly that was my summation of them afterward), I figured I would go back thru the file at the office kept of wildlife sightings and gather my thoughts as professionally as I could, since I was "going on the record" as it were and at the time was still in the employ of that department.
I separated out the reports of Panthers (which out numbered the sightings reported of Thylacines by a small percentage).
Over the ~ 8 years of my tenure as the local Wildlife officer, There were a total of 64 from memory reports of Thylacine within the 8 years or an average of about 8 a year.
That said the reports were actually clustered around I think the years 1988/9 in their distribution - and I put this down to a record low rainfall year where shortage of water was concentrating all manner of animals in close to human settlements (There were a lo of feral pigs for example coming in onto dams on the backs of farms along the Nanup Balingup road for example to access water 2 times a day due to the elevated springs further back in the Lower darling escarpment beginning to dry up...
Instead of the annual average of 1000 or 1200 mms of rain that season we went down to something like 600 or about 50% of the annual average for the area - something that had not occurred since the year 1913.
I believe that the drought was what accounted for the increase in human animal interactions as everyone basically concentrated around the remaining available water supplies both human and wild animals of all kinds.
I can state categorically that I never personally saw a Thylacine during either my 8 years with CALM in Nannup of the remaining 11 years working for myself... (Yet I did definitely see a Black Panther which I will post about separately).
To put that in context, I conducted flora surveys in the local forests because that was part of my duties since I managed the wildflower picking industry over those 200,000 square kilometers of the Nannup Forest District.
I also participated in tree marking for the Logging industry, going into state forests often virgin un-logged forest to select the trees that industry could NOT harvest (so called seed trees and fauna trees)...within the future logging coupes.
This involves walking thru virgin forest at daybreak... with spray cans of tree marking paint....and selecting the trees that industry cannot log.
I also - undertook the departments fauna trapping / surveying program locally for some years and this involved - non injurious trapping of local fauna with principally elliot tin metal traps and sheffield type wire mesh traps as well as the occasional pit traps.
During this work I was fortunate enough to work with Harry Butler OBE, who these days works for Chevron Oil managing the environmental aspects of the browse basin gas exploration project on barrow Island in WA's Pilbara region but was better known as Australia's pre eminent naturalist - who had his own TV show called "In The Wild" popular on TV when i was kid growing up.
I also participated in night time spotlight transect surveys of the forest identifying & surveying yet more native and sometimes non native animals.
Next, I spent a LOT of time out at night with the local kangaroo shooter - around the local areas - because again it was my role to monitor his activities to ensure compliance with the dept requirements at the time for humane operations and that rules with regard to age class of animals culled and assessing abundance in order to be able to issue his damage tags for the Kangaroos to be culled that were causing damage to private crops.
Lastly - while employed by CALM and for the 12 years after I left their employ - I operated a trout fly fishing business on southwest streams and brooks rivers and estuaries etc...
In short people - I lived out in that forest day and night as much as is humanly possible.
I reckon I saw pretty much everything that there was to see.
I managed to trap a Western Quoll / Quenda / Native Cat Dasyurus geoffroii for example which aren't all that common these days.
So I never saw a Thylacine in WA myself despite a total of 20 years extensive time in the forests during which I DID see wild pigs and even wild deer, unusual native animals like the Phascogale (often mistaken for a squirrel) and even a introduced platypus in the Lower reaches of the Donnelly river.
It's not like I wasn't out there looking, is what I am getting at.
Ive met plenty of "fair weather foresters" in my time - (Those who in summer can be found in the office around the air conditioner and water fountain and in winter can be found in the office around the log tile fire, but in spring or autumn when there's work to be done can't be found for love or money) but I can assure you I wasn't one of them!
So...
I never saw a Nannup Tiger,
With that out the way - approximately 64 people thought they did over the 8 years that I was taking the official report sightings/records.
One of those was even one of my "forest workers" (AWU Employees who plant trees and fight fires etc).
Now anyone who knows the southwest will tell you that Nannups famous for being the center for growing whacky tabbacky, weed, mull, call it what you will and SOME of the locals bear a strong resemblance to The Swamp People or Tasmanians even...
BUT with that said - even if I could dismiss fully 50% of the reports as being someone high on weed or off their trolley on magic mushrooms etc... there were occasions when t was tough to dismiss reports from simple down to earth local farming folks - who felt sure enough of what they had seen to put their reputation on the line and actually come into the CALM office and front the counter and fill out an official sighting report.
The "Nannup Tiger" story lost all pubic credibility one year early probably in the 1970's when a claimed sighting was made north of the town in a newly established pine plantation, and on a slow news day the press got all excited and invaded the town.... hoping to film the tiger.
Some locals who were working planting pines - fresh on holidays from the University in Perth looking to make a few extra quid, along with others local to the area who shall remain nameless - grabbed a recently shorn sheep and used a tin of tree marking paint and added a few judicious tiger stripes and let it go in the new plantation - and pointed the journos and camera men in the right direction...
After that Nannup became synonymous with the Thylacine.
Clever tourism operators (A local farming mate of mine nicknamed "Tiger Tom" named his tourist cottages "Nannup Tiger Cottages" and others started with putting up signs saying please don't geed the thylacine on roads leading out of town.
You have ti understand that when logging ceased and the CALM dept left town fully 6 Million a year of disposable wages payroll income left the town...
With only about 1000 people in the town - thats a loss for every man woman and child of $6000 a year in turnover that kept the town alive (shops hotels rates for the shire teachers required for the school police for the police station etc etc...
For a typical family of 5 that's a loss to your town of 30K business turnover a year - and if you want to replace that industry with tourism - well you better take every opportunity to capitalize on ANY media you can get - it's called survival - paying your mortgage and keeping a roof over your head!
You can hardly blame the locals for cashing in on Nannup Tiger Tails - they actually have a bested interest in keeping any rumors alive and well in the press to the best of their ability!
Scientifically now, the fossil records from Margaret River caves and those on the Nullarbore plain prove that their were once Thylacines in Western Australia.
Most research suggests that the introduction of a new predator that eats in the same critical prey weight range as Thylac9ine occurred with the introduction of the dingo to Australia across the Indonesian land bridge about 10,000 years ago, and that this STARTED the decline of the Thylacine on the mainland.
Its interesting of course to note that Tasmania being an island didn't get the dingo introduced 10,000 years ago and thus, their ground dwelling fauna is largely still in tact in comparison to mainland Australia and not surprisingly as a result records of live Thylacines were prominent from Tasmania after white settlement until culling in the early 1930's.
Back to mainland Australia - whatever vestiges (pockets) of existing thylacines might have survived the introduction of the Dingo 10,000 years before on the mainland, took a severe beating when at wote settlement another voracious predator in a similar critical prey weight range in the European fox was introduced and spread across all of mainland Australia. (up to about 18 kilos is the critical prey weight range of the European fox - IE juvenile roos and small wallabys can and are killed by choking their throat until they suffocate).
These animals along with the introduced feral cat have decimated the Australian ground dwelling native fauna, - the very food the thylacine needed to eat to survive.
I recall when doing a spotlight transect survey one night with harry Butler - he recounted upon seeing a feral cat that there are some 20 million feral cats approximately in Australia last estimates (back then) and that each one ate at least 2 native species a day!
Add in what Dingoes have eaten for the last 10,000 years (There were still wild dingoes alive and breeding on the Scott coastal plain east of Augusta during my tenure in Nannup) also what the introduced fox has eaten in the last 200 years - and it is not that hard to understand that probably what the fossil record is telling us, (There USED to be Thylacines here about 10,000 years ago) is probably correct - however as to any remnants surviving?
A small percentage ofg the reported sightings that in my estimation were genuinely true suggests that the last known specimens on the mainland are probably dieing out as I type, if they haven't already.
Tasmania is a different kettle of fish,
Without the dingo introduced 10,000 years ago, and with the fox reportedly only managing to get there in the last few years (if true) its entirely possible in my opinion and experience (I've visited the place 2 times in the last 30 years) that Thylo might persist either in the southwest wetlands as suggested Or the highlands around great lake... the western tiers etc.
In a nutshell that's my take on it.
I could be wrong (i.e. other peoples mileage may vary) but as a professional in the field in an area with a history or consistent reports over a very long time.... I believe i pretty much have it sussed.
Whats largely ignored/ missing is the cultural history of the Aboriginals to tell us MORE about decline of Thylacine... because with few exceptions - theirs is a oral history tradition much of which has been lost already.
That said - their ARE probably exceptions where the Aboriginals had a written history (petro-glyphys and cave paintings) if only we were clever enough to both locate and interpret it.
I have done a little of this myself already but even those important records are being wiped out by mining in the northwest for example - again as I type.
Example of what I am talking about.
While we are quite adept at graffiti even back in the early days of white settlement,
our aboriginal ancestors had a history of such efforts far predating us.
IF one were to study the archaeological record of such petroglyphs and Thylacine was an important part of their cultural history - on the mainland wouldn't you think they would have a record somewhere within their cave artwork and rock engravings?
I've not yet located significant works to that end but I am still looking.
The impression I am getting is that Thylacines on the mainland either were NOT a large part of the Aboriginals daily activity OR that their numbers started to dwindle rapidly once the Dingo arrived.
If it were otherwise I would expect to see a lot MORE of them depicted within the Aboriginal artworks and thus far I have inspected some almost 10,000 with so far just ONE that's possibly - either or a Thylacine or a dingo.
I'll do my best to locate a copy and post it here for you to decide for yourselves.
Thats my personal take on Thylacines after many years at this.
Like i said it won't sit comfortably with many who hope for a more positive outcome.
I'm not saying there aren't some still on the mainland but I personally haven't seen one but I've heard a lot of reports and I've also spent a lot of time both looking and trapping fauna for work and privately.
Cheers!
