New Alleged Thylacine Sightings
15 February, 2012 

Officially they no longer exist, but that hasn’t stopped wildlife watchers spotting thylacines in northern New South Wales.

More alleged thylacine spottings have been reported to our wildlife expert Gary Opit.

Also known as tasmanian tigers, the last known thylacine is believed to have died in a Hobart zoo in 1936.

Since then, there have been hundreds of unconfirmed sightings of the animals across Australia, including a handful around Nimbin in recent weeks.

ABC North Coast wildlife expert Gary Opit says the recent spotters insisted the mysterious animals were not dogs, cats or foxes.

“It’s not a dog or a cat, but it’s about the size of a dog,” he says.

“It’s described as having a banded tail, a greyish animal with stripes across the tail and stripes along the flank.”

Gary hopes the rise in popularity of smartphones will mean that eventually someone can capture the creature on camera.

“It’s usually always the same thing, people driving their car and an animal they’ve never seen before crosses in front of them,” he says.

”People are always adamant it’s not a dog.

“No one has ever been able to get a photo of one, so we don’t know what it is or if it really exists, but the fact that people keep reporting them is interesting.”

Gary has written about the sightings reported to him here in an article entitled “The 50 Thylacine reports”, reports collected over the last ten years during his wildlife talkback radio broadcasts.

Source ABC North Caost NSW

More on the Thylacine:

In “Tasmanian Tiger: The Tragic Tale of How the World Lost Its Most Mysterious Predator”, David Owen tells the tragic story of the thylacine, from its evolutionary origins and its physical and behavioral characteristics to its ill-fated encounter with European civilization and the ongoing fascination with the “Tassie Tiger” as a potent symbol of wildlife conservation. Elegantly written and full of interesting facts and first-hand stories from those who saw the animal in the wild, Tasmanian Tiger offers a compelling account of how fear and ignorance doomed an entire species over the course of a century. And in recounting numerous recent sightings of the thylacine in Tasmania, Owen explores the power that this once-despised creature continues to hold on the imagination today.
Indeed, as described in this book, serious efforts are being undertaken to bring back the Tasmanian tiger through cloning, a controversial project that raises a number of ethical questions for scientists and conservationists everywhere. For both those familiar with the thylacine and those discovering this remarkable animal for the first time, Tasmanian Tiger is a poignant cautionary tale of human folly and the fragility of the natural world.