Does artificial feeding do them harm?
A. As long as natural food is provided (such as dead wallabies that have not been poisoned but have died from road kill) artificial feeding does them no harm. In fact, by moving wallabies from roads to paddocks it probably saves many Tasmanian devils from being killed. Surveys of dead Tasmanian devils on one area of road showed that almost no devils were killed once dead wallabies had been removed from the road, compared to up to 10 road-killed Tasmanian devils per year when wallabies were left on this section of road. It is important that feeding is not too regular or too much so that animals cannot become addicted to artificial food sources.
A. As long as natural food is provided (such as dead wallabies that have not been poisoned but have died from road kill), artificial feeding does them no harm. In fact, by moving wallabies from roads to paddocks it probably saves many devils from being killed. Surveys of dead devils in one area of road showed that almost no devils were killed once dead wallabies had been removed from the road, compared to up to 10 road-killed Tasmanian devils per year when wallabies were left on this section of road. As long as feeding is not too regular and too much so that animals cannot become addicted to artificial food sources, feeding probably does no harm at all.
