The devil's advocates

Get up close and personal with the world's largest marsupial carnivore on Aussie Ark's Australian Geographic Expedition.

- ESME MATHIS

IT'S MID-MORNING, and there's a group of us standing in a Tasmanian devil bachelorette yard at Aussie Ark, looking expectantly at 13 traps we set the night before. From sight alone it's hard to tell if the cylindrical traps were successful in catching any devils; the traps lie at intervals among the tall grass, still and silent.

Aussie Ark is nestled in the Barrington Tops in New South Wales, roughly 200km north of Sydney. Twice a year, the remote wildlife sanctuary hosts the Australian Geographic Expedition, a hands-on conservation experience where visitors help sanctuary staff with day-to-day operations and learn firsthand about captive breeding and rewilding. There's 10 of us on this trip, and until our arrival yesterday afternoon, no-one had previous experience handling devils. Now we're about to weigh them, administer preventative medicines and give them a once-over for wounds or injuries that might need medical attention. The females in this yard are currently in oestrus, so we also need to examine their pouches to make sure everything looks healthy.

Dean Reid, Aussie Ark's operations manager, enters the yard last and locks the gate. He's joined by sanctuary supervisor Tyler Gralton, who's carrying a toolbox crammed with preventatives.

"We rotate [the treatment] every quarter, because if we give them just the same preventative all year round, the worms and parasites will be able to develop a resistance and then we get a superparasite,” Tyler says.

Dean chooses a nearby trap to demonstrate how to process it. Inside, a devil looks up with bright eyes, bared teeth and a shining wet nose. She begins growling, a guttural sound from deep within her throat.