Thylacine: Confirming Tasmanian Tigers Still Live

by Alan Heath

In November 1993, during a holiday in northern Queensland, the author met a man who witnessed a Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) on Cape York Peninsular. This prompted the author to try to confirm that they still live.
On hearing from Mr Heath of some of the Thylacine sightings he had been told about, an academic at a Queensland University urged him to write this book. ' Confirming Tasmanian Tigers Still Live' details some of the many Thylacine sightings on mainland Australia and Tasmania that the author has been told about up until 2014.

188 pages, Paperback

Published December 11, 2014

Reviews

[David Corleto-Bales · Rating 3 out of 5]

More hopeful rather than providing any scientific proof for the thylacine's continued existence, Alan Heath is an optimistic sort who traveled to different parts of Australia searching for stories of the presumably extinct Tasmanian tiger, or "thylacine." The thylacine officially went extinct in 1936, the last known animal dying at the Hobart Zoo. It was assumed to have gone extinct in mainland Australia over 1,000 years ago, presumably because of competition with the dingo, a feral species of dog originally introduced by aboriginal people 4,000 years before. But, the problem with this all is that the little dickens keep being seen. Heath accepts the stories with face value. Most of the book concerns sightings of thylacines in remote areas of the Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland. As someone who has been to the "FNQ" but not as far up the cape as Heath went, I can attest to its remoteness, but still, throughout all of Australia's history up to recent times, the colonial authorities and government never mentioned thylacines in Queensland. One exception is the account of Joseph Banks on Captain Cook's ship in 1770 that saw "native wolves" at what is now Cooktown, (apparently different from dingoes.) Heath follows up his explorations with visits to Victoria, New South Wales, West Australia and even Tasmania itself, talking to rangers and ranchers and anyone who would talk to him. According to Heath, it's "general knowledge" in the FNQ that thylacines still exist, but no one goes on the record because they don't want their land made into protected refuges. Among many aboriginal people that Heath talks to, many had never even heard the thylacine was supposed to be extinct, completely convinced that it still exists. I hope it's all true, but there is much room for doubt.

[Alex T. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actual rating 1.5 stars

The author should spend more time looking for actual proof and less time relying on verbal accounts that could easily be faked and prove nothing.

Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/20...