It’s been almost 40 years since the extinction of Australia’s thylacine, known as the Tasmanian tiger, but reported sightings number in the thousands as Tasmanians scour the dense outback in search of of the lost species.
For researchers, investment is not just a question of hope and time. Adrian “Richo” Richardson, a retired military man turned self-proclaimed tiger researcher, has spent more than 30 years searching for a Tasmanian tiger. Every year he spends more than he wants to admit just on trail camera batteries.
“I wouldn’t want to speculate,” he said. “And please don’t tell my wife.”
How an apex predator died
Tasmanian tigers, carnivores weighing around 55 pounds, roamed Tasmania for thousands of years. They looked more like wolves than tigers. The Tasmanian tiger was, or East (as some believers might say) a marsupial, like kangaroos, koalas and Tasmanian devils.
In the late 1800s, when farmers’ sheep became prey, the local government paid bounties to hunters presenting Tasmanian tiger carcasses. The population had fallen to just one by the mid-1930s: a captive Tasmanian tiger at Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania’s capital.
He died there in 1936. The Tasmanian tiger was listed as extinct in 1986, after 50 years without a confirmed sighting.
Australia has also authorized the culling of kangaroos, approving the death of thousands of kangaroos over the years, saying the animal’s population was increasing and it was preying on grassy habitats of endangered species. A large population also poses a risk to the kangaroos themselves, with authorities having warned in the past that there was not enough food available for the kangaroos to survive.
Australians search everywhere for traces of Tasmanian tigers
If kangaroos are emblematic of Australia, the search for the Tasmanian tiger has become an obsession. If the Tasmanian devil still lives, it is the tiger that has become a sort of local mascot. His image adorns the Tasmanian coat of arms and the island’s license plate.
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Researchers look for footprints, fur and droppings and install surveillance cameras in remote areas throughout Tasmania’s outback.
On January 28, 2017, Richardson heard a scream.
“I was stunned,” he said. “The hairs on my arm and neck were standing up.”
Then he heard another scream.
“The whole environment went silent for about a minute,” he said. “It was an incredible feeling. I just can’t explain it.”
He did not do it see no sign of a Tasmanian tiger, but he’s sure of what he heard. Richardson rejected the idea that the sound could be anything other than a Tasmanian tiger. There are no other species like it on the island, he said.
“I will remember this call until I die,” he said. “And then I had to try to prove to others what I had heard.”
Returning home to Hobart, Richardson sat at his desk and wrote a detailed account with 22 footnotes.
“(It’s) my passion. It’s thylacine,” he said. “I know it’s there.”
Review of reported Tasmanian tiger sightings
When Nick Mooney was a full-time biologist in Hobart, it fell to him to investigate the various tales of Tasmanian tigers. Now retired, he is the unofficial referee of the island. He can’t help but notice: no one ever manages to capture a clear image. Still, some reports gave him pause.
“Sometimes people are perfectly specific about times, places, distances,” Mooney said. “And if they’re at close range, five yards, 10 yards in good light, well, they can’t really go wrong.”
Good naturalists don’t exaggerate, he said. They take their skills very seriously.
“And it’s very difficult to say to these people, ‘I don’t think you’ve seen a thylacine,'” Mooney said.
Some researchers join monitoring groups. Richardson was part of the Booth Richardson Tiger Team, which made global news in 2017 after calling a press conference to announce a sighting.
They provided an image as proof, but Mooney chalked it up as a “chance” and not official confirmation.
Efforts to bring back the Tasmanian tiger through science
While researchers continue to look for signs of Tasmanian tigers in the wild, scientists are trying to revive the species in their laboratories. Andrew Pask, a developmental biologist who works in the TIGRR lab, leads one of these projects.
“We can’t magically bring back the Tasmanian tiger,” Pask said. “We have to start with a living cell and then recreate our thylacine. So to do that you find the closest living relative of your animal that has gone extinct, and for us that’s a small marsupial species . called the fat-tailed dunnart.
In other words, the closest living relative of an apex predator known as the Tasmanian tiger is a mouse-like marsupial.
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“But this little dunnart is a fierce carnivore, even though it’s very, very small,” Pask said. “And it’s a really good substitute for us to be able to do all that editing.”
Pask raised $15 million for a de-extinction project in partnership with the American company Colossal Biosciences, which counts Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton and the CIA among its supporters. They examine the Dunnart’s DNA and compare it to that of the Tasmanian tiger.
“And we’re seeing everywhere that these two genomes, or these two DNA stacks, if you like, are different,” Pask said.
After finding all the differences, Pask told Jon Wertheim, it’s a matter of going in and changing the DNA to turn a fat-tailed Dunnart cell into a thylacine cell.
Efforts to revive the Tasmanian tiger are not limited to Australia. Last year, scientists RNA recovered and sequenced from a 130-year-old Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature at the Natural History Museum of Sweden.
Is it possible to bring back the Tasmanian tiger?
Kris Helgen, chief scientist and director of the Australian Museum Research Institute, understands the drive to end the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger. He says he would be the first person to queue up and see a Tasmanian tiger if the species was actually brought back to life. Helgen just doesn’t think it’s possible.
“The idea that you could actually modify the DNA of this mouse-sized animal to make it this apex predator of Australia stimulates the imagination in many different ways,” he said.
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He puts the odds of success at zero, saying there are simply too many differences between the big-tailed dunnart and the Tasmanian tiger.
“I think it’s an impossible project,” he said.
Helgen has thought a lot about the source of the Tasmanian tiger’s passion and wonders how much of it is driven by remorse.
“It’s a special symbol for Australia and what we’ve lost,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of extinctions here.”
Richardson isn’t waiting for the scientists. His faith unwavering, he plans to continue his search for the Tasmanian tiger.
“I just know it’s there. It’s real,” he said. “In my own heart, I know it’s there.”
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