Yes Andy. I do give this guy the benefit of the doubt that he was genuinely mistaken at the start. But he's been contacted since by an 'expert', and that 'expert' has been down to review the area and footage. Now, can you guess who that 'expert' is? Can you? But still, that's no reflection on Paul Day, he may well have no idea who he's dealing with.
My first thought was that hundreds of reported sightings (never mind unreported sightings) must be indicative of something, but then I thought with the ubiquity of tolerably-high quality cameras the fact that nobody has turned up a conclusive image may itself be indicative of the fact that there are no specimens to be seen.
I've no experience with this field: are any mainstream zoological groups actively involved in searching for the species.
Thing is with thylacines, they look an awful lot like dogs. And tiger sightings don't tend to be that accurate in terms of what a tiger actually looked like. Anyway, there are a few sightings which seem to be very hard to explain, though knowing what I do about the tiger in their final years I don't believe it's possible they survived beyond 1950.
But there are others who know the subject better than me, who take a different view. I will just say that in private a couple of the most prominent people in the field have views which may surprise you.
Funnily enough there actually is an investigation either planned or underway in Cape York, Queensland, by a couple of researchers from James Cook University. Quite what this is all about is a mystery to many, myself included. They cite two sightings, neither of which are particularly good, and are from the 1980's? It seems to be the view that this is in fact a general fauna survey, with the tiger attached to it to generate a bit of pzazz.
Tigers haven't been recorded on the Mainland for around 3,000 years, the evidence for a 19thC population in South Australia proposed by Paddle in 2000, having turned out to be a laughably poor piece of fact checking.
Last official search in Tasmania I'm aware of is the early 80's, after the Naarding sighting. But, there are very sensible people doing private research there. There's LM here, and Mike Williams (who is nobody's fool), also there's the Thylacine Research Unit. They are very straight and professional.
Edit: I forgot to mention Nick Mooney, the man who headed the last search, and was the state's official field researcher. He's retired, but I think he's still going. He knows more than anyone I think.
