[Video begins with words over the striped part of a thylacine pelt. The words read “Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia” on a red banner. It switches to the face of a bearded man with an accent talking as he walks across farmland. He is the sole speaker for the entire video (but I’m breaking up his speech to make it easier to read with eyes)]
Man: Good evening everybody. This is um… uh Me, coming to you live from northeast Tazzy, from some little town that grows a bit of hops for all the beer. So. The last 10 days I’ve probably been acting a bit weird to everybody in the group and online and uh that’s because uhm. Y’know I was checking the SD cards, I found some photos that were pretty damn good.
I know what they are. And so do a few independent witnesses, expert uh canine judges, feline judges, and a vet so far have seen it. I’ve left the… the images with Nick Mooney from uhm the museum. He’s an honorary to the museum in Hobart [???? teamek maybe?]. He’s having a look at them and uh…
I can tell you there’s 3 animals. We believe that uh- when I say we, I mean myself and the committee of TAGA - believe that the first image is the mum, we know the second image is the baby, because it’s so tiny, and third image is the dad. And there’s a little bit of a clue with the mom and the dad as to what they are, certain features of them, ah, but they are ambiguous. HOWEVER. The baby is not ambiguous. The baby has stripes, a stiff tail, the [’hawk/hock?], the coarse hair, it’s the right color, it’s a quadruped. Stocky. And it’s got the right shaped ears. So, looking at the baby, not only do we have a family walking through the bush, we have proof of breeding. So, it puts our thylacine in a much stronger position than it’s been in for the last 30 something years now. 35 I believe.
So, we wait and see. We get confirmation or rejection from Nick Mooney. Either way, um, the museum’s had the first chance to look at the photos. I’ve done the right thing and given the experts a chance to have a look and tell me what they think. Soon, we will know. Hopefully by the end of the week, but it may take a bit longer, and we’ll plan our strategy around that um and hopefully be able to work with the museum and go forward in having the animal reclassified as critically endangered. OR ENDANGERED. We don’t know. We don’t know how many are there, but we know there’s at least 3 wandering around northeast Tasmania with the intention of continuing to do so.
So. Congratulations everyone. [he holds up the beer can he’s been carrying} We’ve done it. Cheers.
[The initial image of thylacine stripes overlaid by the Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia appears]
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