The AG Society Blog: Quoll questioning

By Kylie Piper 7 November 2013
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When Australian Geographic readers ask questions, we do our best to provide the answer.

If you take a look at our appeal for the spotted quoll article, you will see a very interesting question from an avid reader, iheartquolls, who asks…

When Australian Geographic readers ask questions, we do our best to provide the answer.

If you take a look at our appeal for the spotted quoll article, you will see a very interesting question from an avid reader, iheartquolls, who asks:

Hi AG, do the Quolls suffer from fox baiting in tas too?

It’s a great question, iheartquolls, but one that I didn’t think I was qualified to answer. So I took it to Shannon Troy, who will be in charge of the donations raised from our quoll appeal. Shannon’s response to this question is as follows:

“There has been concern in the past that 1080 baiting was causing quoll populations to decline, but there has been a lot of research in this area that has shown 1080 baiting is NOT linked with quoll population decline.

“1080 baiting is being carried out for foxes in Tasmania. Before starting my PhD I worked for the fox eradication program down here, and from that experience I know that 1080 is a hugely contentuous issue amongst stakeholders because of years of extensive indiscriminate use by forestry companies.

“It has now largely been phased out of forestry, but remains the only option for fox eradication in Tasmania. 1080 baiting being carried out for fox eradication is target specific; that is, baits are buried to minimise the chances of them being taken by native wildlife. In my experience, numerous Tasmanian landholders are even convinced 1080 is what caused devil facial tumour disease (this is lab tested untrue).”

We hope that answers your question, iheartquolls, and if anyone else has any queries, go ahead and challenge us! We dare you.