Devil Facial Tumour Disease - History

History

In 1996, a photographer captured several images of devils with facial tumours near Mount William in Tasmania's north-east. At around the same time, farmers reported a decline in devil numbers. Menna Jones first encountered the disease in 1999 near Little Swanport, in 2001 capturing three devils with facial tumours on the Freycinet Peninsula. The devil population on the peninsula decreased dramatically. In March 2003 Nick Mooney wrote a memo to be circulated within the Parks and Wildlife Services calling for more funding for the study of the disease, but the call for funding was edited out before the memo was presented to Bryan Green, then Minister for Primary Industries, Water and Environment. In April 2003, a working group was formed by the Tasmanian Government to respond to the disease. In September 2003, Nick Mooney went to the Tasmanian daily newspaper The Mercury, informing the general public of the disease and proposing a quarantine of healthy Tasmanian devils. At the time, it was thought that a retrovirus was a possible cause. David Chadwick of the state Animal Health Laboratory said that the laboratory did not have the resources needed to research the possibility of a retrovirus. The Tasmanian Conservation Trust criticised the Tasmanian Government for not providing sufficient resources to research the disease, and suggested that the DFTD could be zoonotic, posing a threat to livestock and humans. On 14 October 2003, a workshop was held in Launceston. In 2004, Kathryn Medlock found three oddly shaped devil skulls in European museums and found a description of a devil in London Zoo dying which showed a similarity to DFTD.

A virus was initially thought to be the cause of DFTD, but no evidence of such a virus could be detected in the cancer cells. Calicivirus, 1080 poison, agricultural chemicals, and habitat fragmentation combined with a retrovirus were other proposed causes. Environmental toxins had also been suspected. In March 2006 a devil escaped from a park into an area which was infected with DFTD. She was recaptured with bite marks on her face, and returned to live with the other devils in the park. She wounded a male and by October both devils were observed to have the disease, which was subsequently transferred to two other devils. This incident helped test the viability of the allograft theory of transmission. In 2006, DFTD was classed a List B notifiable disease under the Animal Health Act 1995. Also in 2006, the strategy of developing an insurance population in captivity was developed. It was reassessed in 2008. A 2007 investigation into the immune system of the devils found that when combatting other pathogens, the response from the immune system was normal, leading to suspicion that the devils were not capable of detecting the cancerous cells as "non-self". In 2007, it was predicted that populations could become locally extinct within 10 – 15 years of DFTD occurring, and predicted that the disease would spread across the entire range of the Tasmanian devils. This study also predicted that Tasmanian devils would become extinct within 25–35 years.

In 2008, high levels of potentially carcinogenic flame retardant chemicals were found in Tasmanian devils. Preliminary results of tests ordered by the Tasmanian government on chemicals found in fat tissue from 16 devils have revealed high levels of hexabromobiphenyl (BB153) and "reasonably high" levels of decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE209).