Feral Peril

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2009, 55 Minutes

Tasmania is one of the world’s last great wildlife havens but its struggling native species are under threat from a feral fox invasion. Or are they?

There’s some nasty business going down in Australia’s island state. A feral intruder is on the loose. He's cunning, deadly and a master of stealth, so expert at flying under the radar that some believe he doesn’t even exist. He’s Vulpes vulpes, the elusive and adaptable European red fox, and the hunt is on to destroy him before he destroys Tasmania’s struggling native fauna.

Feral Peril follows the ‘Fox Squad’, a team employed under the Tasmanian Government's fox eradication program, as they chase down sightings, gather evidence and battle public scepticism in a bid to avert ecological disaster. The squad draws on the latest technology including DNA sampling, satellite mapping and photography, but it's not enough to convince the ‘super sceptics’, who will be convinced only by the discovery of a fox, dead or alive.

But time is running out. Tasmania's top native predator, the Tasmanian Devil, is being decimated by a mysterious disease. And as Devil numbers decline, evidence suggests that fox numbers are on the rise.

Feral Peril introduces the stakeholders – the Fox Squad, the sceptics, the hunters, the scientists, the zoo-keepers and the graziers – as each battles to solve a problem that threatens not only Tasmania’s pristine ecology, but its agriculture, its tourism and the strength of its economy.

A Screen Australia and Magic Real Picture Company production in association with Screen Tasmania. A Screen Australia National Interest Program. © 2011 National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and Screen Tasmania.