Local Devils Living in Tasmania

THE weather is wet and windy in Tasmania, so the devils are not coming out of their dens but Dean Reid, manager of the Devil Ark is hoping to see more devils which were born and bred in the Barrington and hopefully find they have joeys of their own.

Dean is working with the Save the Tasmanian Devil program and their biologist Stewart Huxtable learning more about the devils in the wild.

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“They have been gracious enough to allow me to come down here and work with Stewart Huxtable who is a biologist looking after the Forestier Peninsula where some of our devils were released last November,” said Mr Reid.

“It’s a proud moment for us because we’ve seen the whole cycle of life, we’ve seen them born at Devil Ark, seen them released and now here having their own joeys, so it’s showing us that we are doing a good job,” he said.

“I’m learning how to do stuff on the ground, some new handling techniques, which they have been very gracious to show me, techniques that are less intrusive than we usually do in a captive scenario, which is good because it puts less stress on the animals and helps me become a better keeper basically.

“We’ve caught about five of the Devil Ark devils, three have been girls and they do have pouch young, Bree, Brandy and Calypso have joeys so ten in total, Bree has four, Brandy has four and Calypso has two,” Dean Reid said.

The traps are made from white cylinder piping with lots of air holes and some meat on a piece of string.

“The devils are very food orientated and when they pull the pin out it sets off the door and it is nice and dark, it’s not like a cage and most animals caught by cage try and get out and hurt themselves these are fully enclosed, plenty of air holes, nice and dark, it keeps the rain off them , it’s a really good trap,” said Dean.

Usually 12 devils are caught, but they are hoping to trap 20 devils; so far they have 14.

There are 47 traps across the peninsula and devils can travel 25 kilometres in a night, often they only range of a few kilometres a night, but over a week they can easily travel 50 kilometres.

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