The Lesson of the Thylacine

Thylacines once roamed right across Australia. That still surprises many people, because we tend to think of them as the “Tasmanian Tiger” - a strange, striped carnivore from another place and another time. But long before they were confined to Tasmania during the last ice age, Thylacines lived across the mainland too. They evolved and survived here for tens of thousands of years, including alongside First Nations peoples who knew the Thylacine well enough to name it, remember it and carry it in story.

I took this photo in 2022 at the National Museum, when I introduced my friends Yaltji, Loretta and Nolia to the Thylacine. They're Indigenous Rangers from Kiwirrkurra in the Gibson Desert, thousands of kilometres from Tasmania and a very different landscape.

I remember explaining that the Thylacine is extinct now, and that it had been a bit like a dingo with a pouch. Their response was immediate: “Oh yeah, we used to have those on our Country a long time ago. We’ve got a name in language for that one.”

That moment has stayed with me. It was a reminder that this marsupial carnivore was much more than a Tasmanian curiosity. It was once part of the living fabric of Australia.

On the mainland, Thylacines disappeared thousands of years ago, most likely because of a changing climate and the arrival of dingoes. But in Tassie, where dingoes never established, they survived into modern history. And then we destroyed them. European settlers persecuted the Thylacine relentlessly. It was blamed for killing sheep, hunted as vermin and subjected to government bounty schemes. Habitat loss and the impacts of colonisation added to the pressure. The last known Thylacine died in captivity at Hobart Zoo in 1936. A whole species, gone within living memory, not by accident but through fear, ignorance and official policy. That should shame us.

Now, some people are excited by the idea of de-extinction - using genetics and cloning to somehow bring it back. I understand the emotional pull of that. The Thylacine is iconic. Beautiful. Mysterious. There is something deeply appealing about imagining we might reverse one of the great wrongs we inflicted on the natural world.

But I’m with my friends from the Gibson Desert. Better to use that money to look after Country that’s still here. Because de-extinction doesn't fix the real problem. It doesn't stop carbon emissions and land clearing. It doesn't restore damaged habitat. It doesn't remove invasive species. It doesn't end the political and economic systems that keep treating Nature as expendable. And it doesn't protect the species right now slipping towards the same fate: numbats, quolls, bilbies, bandicoots, swift parrots, and so many more.

In some ways, de-extinction risks becoming a comforting fantasy. It lets us imagine that technology might save us from having to do the harder, less glamorous work of protection, restoration and care. But biodiversity collapse won't be solved in a lab. It will be solved by rapidly reducing carbon emissions, protecting habitat, listening to First Nations knowledge, reducing invasive species, funding ranger programs, and taking conservation seriously while species are still alive.

The Thylacine should not just be a symbol of loss. It should be a warning. And perhaps also a lesson. The people who knew this animal on Country understood something important straight away. Rather than indulging in techno-fantasies about resurrecting the dead, we should be protecting what remains. That’s the real test of whether we’ve learned anything at all.

Yaltji, Loretta and Nolia meet the Thylacine at the National Museum of Australia.