People struggle to look after the remaining species we have left here on the mainland, I’d hate to think how tassie devils would fare in such an urban environment. They are already killed by the hundreds on roads in Tasmaina, and Tassie is very much “more wild” than most mainland parts. The ecological balance here is now so out of whack, just re-introducing devils would be nothing other than cruel for them.

They are doing the right thing by keeping them in Tassie and breeding them in captivity, disease free.

I had a similar thought when I was writing the piece–that is, that the infection came via bacteria from all that carrion. But then, two thoughts followed: carrion attracts plenty of scavengers and the odds are, a good size piece of carrion will attract more than one devil, thus making it entirely plausible that two devils would get into a fight over same. Secondly, the researchers found no evidence of a bacterial source (though that doesn’t rule out a bacterium), in their sequencing and amplification of the cells; they were able to make perfect clones (bacteria-generated cancers would presumably leave genetic traces; tell-tale SNPs, etc.