Neil Waters is preparing to spend two years living in the Australian Bush in an attempt to capture a live marsupial wolf or, as it is also called, thylacin.
One of the most famous recent examples of a species destroyed by human hunting practice, thylacin was a characteristic carnivorous marsupial found in Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea.
Sporadic reports of putative thylacines in the wild, however, continue to this day.
One person who is still convinced that the species managed to survive against all odds is Neil Waters, who has received thousands of messages from other people claiming to have seen these animals.
“There were rumors that the thylacine was brought to the mainland, but there is nothing to support these rumors,” he said. "But the hundreds of people who report their sightings cannot be wrong."
Now, in an attempt to prove this once and for all, Waters intends to spend up to two years in the Australian bush using modern techniques and equipment to capture a live specimen.
He even claims to have seen live thylacins himself in northeastern Tasmania in 2010 and 2014.
"This is a long-term project, and I'm ready to give it a couple of years - or until my finances run out," he said. “My dream is to prove that thylacine is alive and well and to develop a management plan to ensure their continued survival.”
Given that, so far, no one has even been able to prove the thylacins are still there, let alone capture one alive, it goes without saying that Waters is posing an almost impossible challenge for himself. It remains to be seen whether he really succeeds.
