What a load of rubbish.By making the Tarkine a National Park the disease is going to stop at the boundaries ? The Tarkine is already riddled with old forestry roads and tracks.Any new mining will most likely use existing roads but upgrade them.Will the Devils already residing inside the new National Park put up road blocks and boom gates keeping other Devils out.The Greens are using the DFT disease as an anti mining, anti forestry,anti developement platform.Full of emotive talk and as usual lacking in facts.” The last known habitat stronghold of the iconic Tasmanian Devil”—-The Devil Facial Tumour Disease taskfoce has just started placing surveillance cameras in the Tarkine courtesy of Tarkine Trails(and no doubt generous funding) because they have no idea of the numbers or health of the Devils already existing inside the Tarkine.Perhaps one of the writers has a lot more information on Devil numbers inside the Tarkine than the taskforce,he should make that research public.

JohnBoy has beaten me to it (#1).  This is Milne at her most hysterical and continues the sad trend of the Greens continually trotting out the devil as an instrument of opposition to development/logging irrespective of the credibility of their argument.  (It’s something I warned about when the species was originally listed.) This disease has been around for decades now and we are yet to see confirmed local extinctions even in the worst hit areas, while in areas further afield there is evidence that it isn’t even causing the kinds of declines it causes in the north-east.

Furthermore there is simply no verifiable substance to claims that the Tarkine is the species’ “last known disease-free habitat”.  Quite aside from the point made by JohnBoy about the lack of actual knowledge to establish for sure that the area is disease-free, no map of a claimed disease-free boundary has ever been produced that suggests the Tarkine is encircled by disease on all sides.  Take a look at http://www.tassiedevil.com.au/tasdevil.nsf/file/A140AACCA1B1F6B0CA2576CB0011BD2C/$file/Final-disease-dist-map-2010.gif - and see all that dot-free area in the far NW, west and far south that isn’t the Tarkine!  (And no, it isn’t all inaccessible wilderness.  If it was in the Strahan/Queenstown area we would know about it.)

If the disease is even pervasive enough to get through the whole state then it is going to spread through populations in the Tarkine region within decades anyway.  If it was really lethal enough to cause extinction in the wild (with or without disturbance) then the proposed protection would be like trying to stop a megafire with tissue paper. 

I say this not to oppose the proposed listing or to support any proposal for open-cut mining in the Tarkine.  It may well be that the former should be supported for other reasons, and I’d very likely oppose the latter if it was on a large scale without adequate safeguards.  I’m just pointing out that if beatups about the devil are the trump card in these debates then those using it can’t have much of a case on other matters.

Future generations, for what it’s worth, will probably be surrounded by a resurgent devil population bouncing back from a disease again and wondering what all the silly hype was about.

I personally call on the Federal Government to reject all heritage listing proposals for the area until the Greens can go twelve months without saying anything silly about the Tasmanian Devil - or preferably based on track record, without discussing it at all!

There has always been booms and busts with Devils.
I can remember my father telling me that after the great depression in the 30’s and even into the late 40’s you would be hard pressed to find a Devil even if you wanted one.
They have always been scabby, scaly and ulcerated little critters caused by fighting, feeding habits and general lifestyle.
Now I am not saying for one second DFTD is a furphy, far from it.
But look at it this way, it certainly has developed into a big earner along with the fox and according to the Auditor-General’s report the two account for some 75% of the DPIPWE’s finances.

http://www.audit.tas.gov.au/publications/reports/specialreport/pdfs/specialreport78.pdf
Page 67
“A consequence of the combined Commonwealth–state funding
arrangements was that the Tasmanian contribution tended to be
focused on providing organisational infrastructure (including policy,
procedures, information and advice) with Commonwealth funds
used on conservation projects. For instance, for 2008-09 two projects
absorbed three-quarters of the funds: fox eradication (42%) and the
DFTD (33%)”.

Which brings me again to this point,  if the Devil is in so much trouble what mentality would be out there laying meat based 1080 “fox” baits in Devil habitat.
It beggars belief.

Meanwhile the greens along with their coalition partners are sneaking around trying to disposses more tasmanians from their own island.
here http://www.theadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/general/1000-sign-pieman-land-use-petition/2353039.aspx
The IGA is being used as a vehicle for all sorts of duplicitous action. It is too cute by far for the greens to claim distance from labour when this sort of garbage is clearly at their behest.

“Future generations, for what it’s worth, will probably be surrounded by a resurgent devil population bouncing back from a disease again and wondering what all the silly hype was about.” - you hope.

And then, “I personally call on the Federal Government to reject all heritage listing proposals for the area ...!” - because you hope that the devils will bounce back ... one day!

So therefore we can swipe our arm across the table and scatter concerns for the Tarkine to the winds, because one day everything will bounce back.  Not that we will be around to see it or know whether we were right or wrong, but it is a nice proposal for a probability, even though it has nothing to do with truth.

Re #5 I am not suggesting scattering “concerns for the Tarkine to the winds” at all and this should have been abundantly clear to you from the third-last para of my post.  Frankly, if there’s anything here that has “nothing to do with truth” it’s your attempt to interpret my comments.

What I am suggesting is that if stopping DFTD is the strongest argument for a given supposed Tarkine-saving action then the case for that action is unbelievably weak.  So let’s have some debate about the real issues affecting the area, whatever they are.

Yes, I do hope devils will recover from the disease.  I also hope there will be at least one sunny day in Hobart in the next 57 years.  Wanting something to occur does not automatically imply unrealistic wishful thinking, especially not when there is very good reason to believe it will.  The primary good reason - but by no means the only one - is that there is no known instance of a disease causing an extinction of a species anywhere near as widespread and common as the Tasmanian devil.

Oh, and quoting part of my flippant “I personally call ...” sentence clearly out of context doesn’t really advance any attempt to interpret my post.