Close-up
In search of a striped phantom

By Richard C. Paddock
Los Angeles Times

TORSTEN BLACKWOOD / AFP/GETTY IMAGES, 2002 A stuffed Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, which was declared extinct in 1986, is displayed at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Scientists have replicated DNA from a 130-year-old female specimen preserved in ethanol in a bid to recreate the species.

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MOLE CREEK, Australia — For years, Trudy Richards searched the forests of Tasmania for the elusive creature with the head of a wolf, the pouch of a kangaroo and the stripes of a tiger.

She put motion-sensor cameras and audio recorders in the forest. She built sand traps to capture a footprint. She trekked through the woods, her camera at the ready. She spent hours on stakeouts — all in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the ancient thylacine.

And then, she says, she finally saw one. According to her account, a Tasmanian tiger, as the creature is commonly known, walked into her campsite one winter evening just before midnight. Richards says her camera was out of reach but insists there was no mistaking the animal's distinctive black stripes.

There's just one problem. The thylacine has been listed as extinct since 1986, 50 years after the last known specimen died in captivity at Tasmania's Hobart Zoo. Although some scientists say the animal might have survived into the 1980s, there has been no confirmed sighting in 68 years. Scientists say the species vanished from mainland Australia thousands of years ago.

Such negativity does not deter tiger hunters like Richards. Tasmania, a rugged island of 460,000 people south of the Australian mainland, is known for its independent streak, and many here reject the verdict of science. For them, the survival of the world's largest marsupial carnivore is a matter of faith.

"They're out there," says Richards, 41, who has no scientific training and works as a clerk at a farm-supply store. "They've been out there for the last 70 years. You either believe or you don't."

While they search the dense forest for evidence of a living thylacine, scientists in Sydney hope to prove that, in the Tasmanian tiger's case, extinction is not forever.

At the Australian Museum in Sydney, scientists have taken the first step in cloning the thylacine from museum exhibits and dream of someday creating a colony in the wild.

In 2002, they reported success in replicating thylacine DNA extracted from a pup that had been preserved in alcohol, but since then the work has slowed. Some suggest that the team's biggest accomplishment has been in generating publicity for the museum.

"It's obviously a very longshot," acknowledges Don Colgan, who is heading the project.

Pouch faces backward

More like a large dog than a tiger, the thylacine had a wolflike head and jaws that opened remarkably wide. Its body was yellow-brown with black tigerlike stripes on its back and hindquarters. It had a long snout and a thick, stiff tail. The female had a pouch that opened toward the rear, an advantage in protecting the young when it moved through brush.

The thylacine was known to eat only fresh meat, unlike its closest relative, the smaller Tasmanian devil, an aggressive, noisy marsupial notorious for devouring carrion.

When European settlers introduced sheep to Tasmania in the 19th century, the thylacine found a ready source of food. Sheep farmers blamed the tiger for huge losses — sometimes unjustly — and the creature was soon branded a dangerous pest. In 1888, the government offered a bounty of 1 pound sterling, the equivalent of a week's wages, for each thylacine killed.

Thousands were shot, trapped, snared, clubbed and poisoned. By 1910, the thylacine population had fallen so low that the bounty scheme was abandoned. As the creature was disappearing, museums contributed to its demise by offering large payments for specimens.

Pictured all over

Today, the thylacine has become a Tasmanian icon. The tiger can be seen on beer bottles, billboards, postage stamps, license plates, buses, city emblems, the state's coat of arms and the logo of the Tasmanian Cricket Association. It even found its way onto a postage stamp issued by the African nation of Tanzania. Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service biologist Nick Mooney has spent more than two decades fielding reports of thylacine sightings and following up on those that appeared the most credible.

In 1982, he led one of the biggest official tiger searches after park ranger Hans Naarding reported seeing a thylacine close enough to count 12 stripes on its back. Mooney's team scoured northwestern Tasmania for a year without finding a trace of the animal. Today, Mooney does not rule out the possibility that the thylacine still exists but believes it is highly unlikely.

He has analyzed more than 700 reported sightings and sees a similarity to reported sightings of UFOs. Often, the reports are of brief encounters on a highway at dusk.

Many truly believe they have seen a thylacine, he says, but eyewitness accounts are often unreliable.

The disappearance of the species has spawned a new breed of Tasmanian adventurer: the thylacine hunter. Often secretive and solitary, they distrust one another yet have a fundamental optimism and believe in the beleaguered tiger's ability to survive against all odds.

They say their goal is to protect the tiger. But they also talk of the millions of dollars they believe the discovery would be worth.

30 years of searching

One of the foremost hunters is Col Bailey, 66, an affable retired landscape gardener who has spent more than 30 years searching for the tiger. He wrote a book, "Tiger Tales," a collection of stories of purported thylacine sightings and old-timers' accounts of the animal.

Bailey says his obsession with the thylacine began when he was 29, after he became convinced that he saw one outside the mainland city of Adelaide not far from his home. He theorizes that the animal he saw had escaped from a zoo decades earlier.

Bailey retired here 15 years ago to pursue his search full time.

"It's a passion, I guess. Maybe I am mad," jokes Bailey. He says he fields dozens of calls a year from people who say they have spotted a thylacine. No one has ever found the carcass of a tiger, he says, because Tasmanian devils quickly consume every dead creature in the forest.

He recently spent 12 days tramping alone through the rugged wilderness of southeastern Tasmania following his hunch that the creature was there. He wore a foul-smelling potion he made so the tigers would not get his scent, but he still came up empty.

"I'm just waiting for the day when I really get the proof," he says. "Science has this myth, and it is a myth, that the last one died in Hobart in 1936. But you can't put a date on extinction. To say that was the last one is pretty far-fetched."

Talk at the Tiger Bar

The little town of Mole Creek in north-central Tasmania was once in the heart of thylacine country. Today, a popular place to see the animal is at the Tiger Bar on the main street of town. On the wall are dozens of thylacine likenesses: drawings, murals, footprints, news articles, a fake tiger fur, and even a cartoon of Tiger Woods as a golfing thylacine. Customers drink Cascade beer — the one with the Tasmanian tiger on the label.

"My grandfather used to see them," says Ron Lee, 57, a retired logger drinking a beer at the bar. "He used to shoot them."

A frequent customer at the Tiger Bar is Trudy Richards, who lives nearby and features in some of the news clippings on the wall.

Richards, whose cattle-ranching ancestors used to snare tigers in the highlands, says her close encounter occurred about 12 miles northeast of Mole Creek. About 11:30 at night, she says, the thylacine strolled into her camp.

"It wasn't a devil. It wasn't a wallaby. It was definitely a tiger," she says. "The stripes really stood out. That's the first thing you see. It's got the most beautiful eyes, really dark, almond-shaped eyes."

She says she shone her flashlight on the animal and observed it for about two minutes from about 40 yards away before it disappeared into the woods. She says she was unable to find footprints later because the soil was dry. But she does not seem distressed that she has no proof of her sighting.

"It took me 20 years to see one, and that's not a bad average," she says, adding, "You never have your camera when you want it."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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