The Tasmanian devil, an inhabitant of Australia, species is nearing extinction. I read the article, “Tasmanian Devil Endangered” by Laura Leigh Davidson. Written on May 28, 2008 the article shows that a rare cancer has infected this species by the name of devil facial tumor disease. One of the few cancers that are actually passed on as would a cold or virus it is rapidly taking out the Tasmanian devil population. It states in the article, “The Tasmanian state government estimates that the number of devils has dropped from around 150,000 in the mid-1990s to between 20,000 and 50,000 at the end of 2006.” This disease takes at least six months to kill. Tumors grow around the neck and mouth of a devil and which takes away the capability to eat. This makes for a slow, painful death from starvation. A devil contracts this cancer by biting another devil. But how did it start in the first place? Hamish McCallum, professor of wildlife research at the University of Tasmania believes that the devils directly took in chemicals. He suggests that since they are scavengers when they look for food they search in trash dumps and such. In there could be a number of things. Such as chemicals or dead animal carcasses. These rubbish dumps are being left open free for little animals to mess around in.I think that humans should do a better job at concealing their trash. Obviously it’s a gross matter but animals do not know any better than to look for what they can eat in there. This relates to The Lorax because the “lorax” in this case is us humans. We are polluting the land with garbage making it tempting for the animals to eat it. They don’t know that a killing disease waits for them in a dead carcass that they’re eating. In the article it says that they brought disease-free devils to the Australian mainland to repopulate with a clean start there. Humans are ruining this species and are ruining many others too by carelessly thinking about our actions.
You can find this article at: http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3749635
The title of your article caught my attention right away! It was very interesting and made me want to read what that was all about. The facts you pointed out about how the population number of the Tasmanian devils has decreased dramatically from the mid-1990s to 2006 is just unbelievable and really sad! So it was actually a pretty smart idea for them to bring some of the disease-free devils over to Australia to repopulate there. We should really work on concealing our trash better so that this doesn't start happening to other species of animals out there. Maybe we could create a better design of trash cans to stop animals from being able to get inside of it.
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