As a card-carrying and extremely proud Tasmanian, I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty: We are all certifiably mad.
Living on your own little island will do that to you. Isolation breeds strange creatures.
But what it might not breed, what might not actually be among those creatures as it turns out, are foxes.
For literal decades now, the paranoia about preventing foxes entering Tasmania, and eradicating any that may have slipped through the cracks, has been very real down there.
‘Course with most things pertaining to Tassie, it’s all about who you talk to. For as long as there have been people convinced that the European red fox is walking amongst the Tasmanian wilderness as we speak, there have been just as many – if not more – utterly adamant that someone’s merely taking the piss.
Nonetheless, from 2001 until around 2014 the Tasmanian State Government – in conjunction with the Federal Government – poured money directly into the issue, with the fox eradication program receiving some $50million over the years.
The only problem with that is that all evidence pointing towards active fox activity in Tasmania might well have been one giant hoax.
A new report obtained by the ABC points to much of the evidence used to justify the program’s continued operations is potentially suspect-at-best, and a flat-out hoax at worst.
Back in October, for example, a fox carcass found on the side of the highway was ruled to have been brought in from Victoria by Biosecurity Tasmania. Since then, a further four carcasses were found on Tasmanian roadsides. All ruled hoaxes as well.
According the report compiled by zoologist Simon Fearn, 57 alleged poops from “Tasmanian foxes” were asked to analysed. Of those, the report ruled that 26 of those samples were potentially hoaxes, and a further 11 were more than likely the product of other animals.
The report, which was compiled in 2011, cast severe doubt on the evidence that the Government program was based on, suggesting instead that the hoax work could have been undertaken by someone internally who was keen to keep the program running. All of the poo samples collected that were ruled to be hoaxes were collected by the same official.
“Sufficient evidence exists to suspect that some hoaxing has occurred via mainland fox scats being placed in the landscape.”
Now, it needs to be stated pretty firmly here that the threat of fox activity in Tasmania is still pretty real, and any foxes who escape into Tasmania could have devastating effects on the state’s endangered birds and animals.
The push for calling fox activity in Tasmania a hoax has its largest voice in the form of state independent MP Ivan Dean, who has firmly stated that Tasmania’s fox threat is a massive porky pie. Dean, for whatever it’s worth, also once held up proceedings in the Launceston City Council for nigh on a full week after he thought he heard someone call him a “dickhead.”
“The evidence being produced since 2002 or 2000 is all very questionable, and in actual fact a lot of it has certainly been hoaxed and been fraudulent.”
Hmm.
Dean, the former Tasmanian police commissioner, actually went so far as to file a criminal complaint detailing the allegations of fox-related fraud earlier this year. Police threw the complaint out in September, but the state Integrity Commission is currently considering its own investigation into the matter.
So are there foxes in Tassie, or is the threat of them entering the state and wreaking havoc on the local ecosystem quite present and real?
Or is the more likely scenario someone literally flying to the mainland to pick up dead foxes and various samples of frozen poo, sneaking them back into the state, and placing them in convenient finding places in order to fraudulently misappropriate federal funding?
I tell ya pals, it’s a dog act either way.
Source: ABC News.
Photo: Arterra/Getty.
