Do you treat the Devil Facial Tumour Disease in individuals?
Treatment hasn’t yet been trialled for the following reasons: • Initially we needed to make the best use of available resources by investing time into the study of the disease. • Most importantly, if a cure for this disease is found, we need to be able to use it from a wildlife management point of view rather than on individual animals – we want to keep the devils wild and in the wild. • Surgery and chemotherapy would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement from a population point of view. Nevertheless, nothing is ruled out that may help to save the devil, and research is proposed to investigate the possibility and feasibility of cancer treatment for devils in some limited situations.
