A search is under way on Queensland’s Gold Coast for a missing Tasmanian devil who escaped her enclosure in a daring early morning dash caught on camera.
The devil, named Mary, did a Houdini from the Paradise Country theme park, escaping from quarantine in the early hours of Tuesday.
CCTV cameras caught the carnivorous marsupial skulking around deserted grounds at 4am that morning – before she scampered out of frame.
As of Wednesday afternoon, despite a dozen of the park’s wildlife team scouring the area – alongside a drone operator with thermal imaging capabilities – Mary remained on the run.
So how did Mary escape? Paradise Country curator of animals, Lauren Mousley, says that remains “a bit of mystery”.
“At the moment, we do think that an abnormally large leap has happened – and that is how she has breached out of her quarantine area,” she says in a video interview released by Village Roadshow, which operates several theme parks on the Gold Coast.
Mousley says staff were not only shocked to hear an animal had escaped when they made the discovery at about 7.30am on Tuesday – they couldn’t believe it was Mary.
Mary and her companion, Mavka, were not long arrived from a zoological facility in New South Wales, according to a spokesperson.
Mary is two, Mousley says, an age at which devils “can be a little bit more adventurous”.
“But – we’ve only known her a short period of time – and what we do know about her is that she is extremely shy and, when there is movement, she tends to bunker down,” the zookeeper says.
“So finding that she was the one that, uh, headed out, is very, very abnormal, given her demeanour”.
Nonetheless, Mousley warns the public against approaching Mary.
“We have conducted a full perimeter search of Paradise Country – but if people do locate her outside the perimeter, they are encouraged to call Wildcare on their hotline number [07 5527 2444],” she says.
“Do not approach the animal. Devils can be reactive if they are provoked or if anyone attempts to catch them. So please call Wildcare”.
McCallum says it is not only overly inquisitive humans to whom Mary could pose a risk.
“Devils are not only scavengers, they do actively hunt,” the Tasmanian devil facial tumour expert says. “If I were a brush tailed possum … I’d be a bit nervous,”
Stray cats and foxes, too, may be feeling a little on edge. Which is precisely the reason why some have proposed the native carnivores be brought back to mainland Australia.
Devils inhabited mainland Australia until somewhere between 500 and 5,000 years ago. Some conservationists argue rewilding the mainland would suppress cat and fox numbers – invasive predators that have decimated small to medium-sized native mammals, not to mention birds and reptiles.
But such rewilding would be better done in a place like Wilsons Promontory national park, McCallum says, which looks across Bass Strait to Tasmania and is isolated by a narrow isthmus.
“So if things did go pear shaped you had a chance of getting them off,” he says.
One lone devil poses no major biological risk, though, McCallum says – he is more worried about Mary. If she has escaped the park grounds, the ecologist fears she could end up as roadkill.
“I’d be concerned about dogs attacking her as well, but certainly her being killed by a car would be the most deadly threat,” he says.
Emeritus Prof Hamish McCallum believes there is a case to be made for the reintroduction of the Tasmanian devil to the Australian mainland – just not like this.
“You wouldn’t be introducing [devils] to somewhere like south-east Queensland first,” McCallum says.
“And, obviously, one random sub-adult female getting out is not the way you’d do it”.
But McCallum is hopeful Mary will be found. While it is certainly possible she could survive in a patch of bush – he says the mammal density in south-east Queensland bush would be much lower than in Tasmania, and she would be likely to get hungry.
And a hungry devil, he says, is easily trapped.
