oddlight

Researchers revive plan to clone the Tassie tiger

The last living Tasmanian tiger is seen in this picture, dated 1936.

The audacious plan to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the dead through cloning is to be revived by a coalition of academics.

Three months after the Australian Museum said it was shelving plans to clone the tiger - or thylacine - the University of NSW's Dean of Science Mike Archer said the work was being picked up by a group of interested universities and a research institute.

Professor Archer, a former director of the museum, said researchers from NSW and Victoria were likely to take part in the program, which involves recovering DNA from preserved tiger tissue to breed a living specimen.

The University of NSW was likely to take part and the museum would be asked to co-operate.

Professor Archer declined to publicly name the other bodies involved before they were formally committed.

"A group of institutions is involved in moving ahead with creating new ways of getting the thylacine project back on track," Professor Archer said.

"I would see this institution [UNSW] being involved.

"We're beginning to think how we would progress this program."

The Australian Museum captured worldwide headlines in 1999 when under Professor Archer's directorship it announced plans to take the DNA from a thylacine pup that was preserved in ethanol in 1866 and reconstruct it.

The museum planned to clone the thylacine using the egg of another carnivorous marsupial, the Tasmanian devil.

The plan attracted more than $300,000 in sponsorship from the private sector.

However, Professor Archer left the museum in 2004 and in February the institution said it was abandoning the work due to poor DNA samples and a lack of adequate technology.

The decision won praise from some conservationists who said the money spent on cloning research would have been better spent on preserving existing endangered species.

Greens Senator Bob Brown said he believed the idea of bringing the dead back to life was "dysfunctional" because the habitats occupied by the thylacine are themselves being destroyed.

The last known tiger died in Hobart Zoo on September 7, 1936.

In February this year, two German tourists caused a flurry of excitement when they produced two digital images they claimed showed a living tiger they had encountered in the wild.

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery director Bill Bleathman, who viewed the photographs, said they showed the back of a thylacine but its head, hindquarters and tail were not clearly visible.

The pictures are considered inconclusive.

In March Kerry Packer's magazine The Bulletin announced it would pay $1.25 million for the capture of "a live, uninjured animal" as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations.

Tasmanian tour operator Stewart Malcolm subsequently upped the offer to $1.75 million, saying that he had been planning for months to offer a bounty.

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

 Like the Tasmanian devil, the thylacine is a carnivorous marsupial.

 It was hunted into extinction because it was regarded as a threat to livestock.

 The last known specimen died in Hobart Zoo in 1936.

 In March, The Bulletin announced it would pay $1.25 million for the capture of "a live, uninjured animal".