1805 TO 1936
(continued)
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Commencing on 28 April 1888 the Tasmanian Government paid £1 each
for the scalps of adults, and 10/- each for those of juveniles. At
the time, £2 was considered a reasonable weekly wage. Individual
farmers offered similar bounties. This policy of destruction took
its toll. As early as 1863, the famous
wildlife
illustrator John Gould warned:
"When the comparatively small island of Tasmania becomes more densely populated,
and its primative forests are intersected with roads from the eastern to
the western coast, the numbers of this singular animal will speedily diminish,
extermination will have its full sway, and it will then, like the Wolf
in England and Scotland, be recorded as an animal of the past: although
this will be a source of much regret, neither the shepherd nor the farmer
can be blamed for wishing to rid the island of so troublesome a creature".
According to Griffith (1972), as late as 1909, newspaper advertisements
could be seen offering "tiger shoots for visitors in search of fun"! |
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| T.
H. Maguire's 1849 portrait of John Gould (1804-1881). |
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One "old timer" explained to Griffith how, around the year 1900, a team
of two men needed only four months to collect a bounty on 300 thylacines.
However, anecdotes of this sort must be treated with discretion.
This figure is too high to be congruous with the bounty records studied
by Guiler (1961b).
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| The
curator of the Thylacine Museum with a saddening relic of the bounty
era - a well preserved thylacine pelt which was probably taken in the early
years of the 20th century. |
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The Government of Tasmania received scalps from 2,040 adults and 144 juveniles,
whilst the Van Diemen's Land Co. obtained a further 84. Independent
farmers probably took a similar number. Few scalps originated from
the sparsely populated, dense rainforests of the island's western coast.
The peak kill (172) took place in 1900, and a rapid decline followed.
The bounty given by the Government was discontinued in 1910. However,
the Company's bounty remained in effect until 1914, during which year only
three scalps were obtained. Surprisingly, the decline was apparently
not directly a result of hunting pressure; as Guiler pointed out, the collection
of scalps suffered a sudden collapse rather than a gradual decline.
A few old timers interviewed by Guiler stated that the decline was quite
rapid and occurred simultaneously across the island. One grazier
said that in 1910 all of Tasmania's marsupial carnivores began dying of
a disease resembling distemper. Through the 1920s, thylacines were
still being exported to foreign zoos (Grzimek 1967). Guiler (1966)
states that the last documented killing of a thylacine was at Mawbanna
in April of 1930. That year, a closed season on hunting was granted
for December, the alleged breeding season. On 7 September 1936, the
last known captive died in the Hobart Zoo. Ironically, in that same
year, thylacines received total legal protection. By then however,
the damage to the species' population had become far too severe. |
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