A $2.25-million grant from the National Science Foundation in the United States will fund research into the genetic origins of an infectious cancer that has killed around 80 per cent of Tasmanian devils.
The grant has been awarded to a research team with members in Australia, the US and the UK, to carry out a four-year collaborative programme.
Devil Facial Tumour Disease was first detected in Tasmania in the mid-1990s and is one of only three known cancers that are contagious. Its precise cause is unknown, but it is thought to be spread when devils bite each other during fights over food and territory. It occurs in devil populations across more than 60 per cent of Tasmania, with one of the last remaining disease-free populations now threatened by plans to open up the Tarkine wilderness, in the state’s north-west, to mining.
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