“Taz”, the Tasmanian devil of Loony Tunes cartoon fame, is on the road to extinction.
Not only has a fearful contagious cancer decimated numbers by 90 per cent in some areas of the Australian state of Tasmania, devils are also being killed increasingly on Tasmanian roads as a tourism boom takes off.
Donald Knowler has recently self-published a book, Riding the Devil’s Highway, to draw attention to a colossal incidence of roadkill in a state dubbed “the roadkill capital of the world” by researchers.
He’s now starting a petition urging the Tasmanian Government to impose speed restrictions at night in areas which have been identified as roadkill hotspots.
Please sign the petition asking Premier Will Hodgman to act to save the devil and end a broader carnage which sees one animal killed every two minutes on Tasmanian roads, a figure that some estimates put as high as half a million a year. In the devil’s case, there is a very real concern that if the cancer does not drive it to extinction in the wild, the motor car will.
