Program to protect Australia's Tasmanian Devil
Updated
A national project to save Australia's endangered Tasmanian devil from extinction will be led by an Adelaide University zoologist.
Dr Jeremy Austin says the population of devils in Tasmania has halved in the past ten years.
Dr Austin says other zoologists and the Tasmanian Government will work to suppress the common infectious facial tumours in devils by using DNA screening technology.
"Using all these different sort of molecular markers we'll be able to tell the managers what animals have the greatest chance of being immune to the disease and therefore what animals are best to be included in these captive breeding programs and wild management populations."
