The Effort to Study the Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease

Here is a nice article about a effort on Tasmania to conserve the wild Tasmanian Devil population that continues to be ravaged by the facial tumor disease:

‘Skinny boy’ is back. The three-year-old Tasmanian devil is a serial offender. Thin and hungry, he’d been among the first devils trapped last March during the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s (TMAG) field trip to the remote coast south of Cape Sorell, halfway up Tasmania’s west coast. And here he is the very next day, again at the wrong end of a metre-long PVC tube trap.

“He has this big open wound, from under his chin right down his chest,” says scientific officer Billie Lazenby, as she peers down at Skinny Boy in the upended trap while wriggling her hands into disposable latex gloves. “Yesterday it had this yucky flap of skin hanging off it. He’d most likely have gotten it fighting.”

With help from fellow researcher Brian Looker, Billie slides Skinny Boy into a fresh hessian bag, which she carries to where veterinarian Jemma Bergfeld is pulling on her disposable gloves. Brian, meanwhile, wanders away with the empty trap and dons his elbow-length rubber gloves and starts thoroughly cleaning the trap with water, brushes and an industrial-strength disinfectant named Virkon.

All these gloves and cleanliness hint at the reason the TMAG team is here, on this rarely visited stretch of coast. The devils here have never been studied, but mere zoological curiosity wouldn’t have got the helicopter flying here. It was Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD). This deadly, transmissible cancer – responsible for rapidly wiping out three-quarters of devils in areas where it’s found – has invaded about two-thirds of Tasmania. But, it seems, it isn’t here. Not yet. None of the devils trapped so far on this trip has shown signs of the disease.

Softly spoken and reassuringly gentle with her marsupial charge, Billie settles down on the sandy track beside Jemma, who is preparing her tools of trade – needles and phials for collecting blood samples. Billie positions Skinny Boy so that Jemma can extract her samples. He isn’t the first devil recaptured on the 10 km long line of 40 traps, and won’t be the last, according to team leader David ‘Doozie’ Pemberton.

“A lot of animals are incredibly wary of traps,” Doozie says. “Some ?just can’t be trapped. Devils, however… they’re probably the most trap-happy animals I’ve studied.”

Once Billie and Jemma have the blood samples they start examining Skinny Boy’s wound, a fist-sized patch of raw flesh on his chest. “There’s no sign of infection,” Jemma says. “For such a big wound it looks really good. I reckon he’ll be fine.”  [Australian Geographic]

You can read the rest of the article at the link.