A group of Tasmanian devils will be transferred to a small Australian island to start what is hoped will be a self-sustaining population, free from the facial tumor that has devastated their species.
Tasmania's Environment Minister Brian Wightman said 14 of the marsupials, carefully selected from captive breeding programs across Australia, would be released Thursday on Maria Island, a nature sanctuary off the state's east coast.
He said it was a "major step forward" in the race against extinction of the devil due to an extremely contagious facial tumor that has decimated the once-rampant rat-like marsupial.
Their plight is so dire authorities have started breeding a so-called "insurance population" in captivity to ensure they do not die out.
"The Maria Island translocation is designed to establish a self-sustaining population of healthy wild devils in a safe haven where they are protected from interaction with the deadly facial tumor disease," Wightman said.
"It will strengthen the insurance population of disease-free Tasmanian devils, help preserve wild traits in the insurance population and provide genetic stock for future reintroductions."
sparrow
Tasmania is the only place where the devil is found in the wild and since the facial tumor was first discovered in 1996 numbers have plunged by 91 percent to the low tens of thousands.
There are few disease-free pockets remaining on the island state.
The cancer, which typically causes death within three to six months, is spread during fighting over food and territory, when a healthy devil will bite an infected devil's face and pick up cancer cells.
需要幫助保護這些野生動物
他們正面臨著艱難的時刻,來對付這項疾病!
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