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The fox that wasn’t there?

By Clive Marks - posted Friday, 23 July 2010


Presently, the issue is wholly and solely scientific and forensic and one of allowing science to work the way it should. The rigour of the scat-DNA technique and the entire chain of procedures and assumptions used to generate results need to pass muster, audited so it can be our irrefutable evidence. It should be assessed and overseen by qualified and totally independent forensic scientists, who are spared being worded up by those with vested institutional interests and sad tales of scientific martyrdom.

If foxes are indeed all over Tasmania it reflects a monumental failure of public institutions and their lack of ability to produce good science: let’s be honest enough to admit this and brave enough to demand higher levels of behaviour and scrutiny in the future.

Kangaroo Island is fox free and I would like to keep it that way. Given the long-lasting three-ringed circus in Tasmania, we simply cannot afford to repeat this folly else were.

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But what happens if the DNA-based test and field protocols are not credible? Let’s all hope so. Perhaps the biggest conservation tragedy in Tasmania’s history is instead an expensive case study in the perils of inadequate scientific rigour and review, and the misuse of the “precautionary principle”.

At the very least it might mean that things are not as bad as they presently might seem. Let’s find out, because most likely we can do so if we demand that science does what science should. Stay appropriately sceptical until we have some irrefutable evidence and have a listen to that Gershwin song, remembering that until you have irrefutable evidence - “it ain't necessarily so”.

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This is an edited version of an article which was first published in the Tasmania Times on Jluy 18, 2010. The original article can be read here.



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About the Author

Dr Clive A Marks is the director of Nocturnal Wildlife Research Pty Ltd and was the head of Vertebrate Pest Research in Victoria for over a decade. He has published widely on aspects of fox biology and control in independently peer-reviewed science journals.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Clive Marks

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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