On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 10:46:03AM +0000, Ian May wrote:
> A recent review into the Tasmanian Fox eradication program has found
> no evidence of foxes in Tasmania. There are calls for a thorough
> Police investigation into this whole sorry saga.
The "review" was by a small self-created group containing people
who had been previously been been critical of the fox control program.
They published some papers in scientific journals which cast some
doubt on evidence of foxes in Tasmania & its analysis - but there
were also replies and debate in at least 1 journal.
Although everone, except perhaps Ian, agrees there is strong evidence of
foxes being present in Tasmania in the last 2 decades. The view of the
"review" group is apparently that most observations was false positives,
and most likely foxes never established and have been not been present
in Tasmania for over a decade(?).
There was a depressing 2010 paper suggesting the best interpretation
of the scat-derived DNA evidence was that foxes were widespread &
well-established in Tasmania. The "review" group published papers
critical of the scat-derived DNA evidence & this analysis.
This year a paper was published suggesting the best interpretation of
the carcass revidence is that foxes are extinct in Tasmania or nearly so:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4300087/
This doesn't rely on the "review" group's work.
Andrew
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