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Three young male Tasmanian Devils have settled into their new home at the Rainforestation Nature Park at Kuranda in Far North Queensland.

The three brothers arrived from Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo as part of a highly successful breeding program that has brought the species back from the brink of extinction due to the Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD).

Rainforestation Wildlife Team Leader David Kelly said humans might be happy to be coming out of a COVID Pandemic, but Tassie Devils have had it tough after more than 20 years of struggling to survive a fatal cancer that threatened their very existence.

Kelly advised “first identified in the mid-1990s, this aggressive and highly transmissible cancer ravaged Devil populations across Tasmania, with the conservation response to create a community of disease-free Devils in captivity on the mainland.”

Explaining that the successful program has seen the establishment of several healthy wild populations from captive bred animals, which meant it was changing from a “breed to release” to a “breed to maintain” strategy, Kelly advised “put simply, a ‘breed to release’ program aims to breed as many animals as possible, while maintaining good genetic diversity in the captive population, to provide an opportunity of eventually releasing significant numbers of healthy captive bred animals back into their wild habitat.

"A ‘breed to maintain’ program means that the facilities that house Tasmanian Devils are now looking to maintain a healthy captive breeding population, not to continue to grow the number of individuals in the program.”

To celebrate their arrival, Rainforestation will be hosting additional Tasmanian Devil Presentations this coming Saturday 28th May at 11am and 1pm.

Wildlife presentations are a daily activity in the Koala and Wildlife Park at Rainforestation, and alongside the extended Devils presentations, there’ll be plenty more to see including a Feeding Presentation featuring resident 5-metre Estuarine Crocodile ‘Jack the Ripper’.

Rainforestation will be working with local schools on a competition to come up with names for the three creatures while they settle in to their home in the coming weeks.

Image courtesy of Rainforestation Nature Park.

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