Wildlife biologist Nick Mooney has the unenviable task of investigating all "sightings" of the tiger total 4,000 since the mid-1930s,and averaging about 150 a year. It was Mooney who was first consulted late last month about the authenticity of digital photographic images purportedly taken by a German tourist while on a recent bushwalk in the state, on face value, Mooney says, the account of the sighting, and the two photographs submitted as proof amount to one of the most convincing cases for the species' survival be has seen.
And Mooney has seen it all-the mistakes, the hoaxes, the illusions and the plausible accounts of sightings. Hoaxers aside, most people who report sightings end up believing they have seen a thylacine ,and are themselves believable to the point they could pass a lie-detector test, according to Mooney .Others, having tabled a creditable report, then become utterly obsessed like the Tasmanian who has registered 99 thylacine sightings to date. Mooney has seen individuals bankrupted by the obsession, and families destroyed."It is a blind optimism that something is, rather than a cynicism: that something isn't," Mooney says. “If something crosses the road, it's not a case of 'I wonder what that was? 'Rather, it is a case of 'that's a thylacine! 'It is a bit like a gold prospector's blind faith, it has got to be there'."
However, Mooney treats all reports on face value. "I never try to embarrass people, or make fools of them. But the fact that I don't pack the car immediately they ring can often be taken as ridicule. Obsessive characters get irate that someone in my position is not out there when they think the thylacine is there."
But Hans Naarding, whose sighting of a striped animal two decades ago was the highlight of "a life of animal spotting", remains bemused by the time and money people waste on tiger searches. He says, resources would be better applied to saving the Tasmanian devil ,and helping migratory bird populations that are declining as a result of shrinking wetlands across Australia.
Could the thylacine still be out there?"Sure,"Naarding says. But he also says any discovery of surviving thylacines would be "rather pointless". "How do you save a species from extinction? What could you do with it? If there are thylacines out there, they are better off right where they are.