Big cats in South West Victoria - was it the US Army who put them there?
Original Article page:
http://www.abc.net.au/southwestvic/stories/s1396101.htm
A man and his infra-red camera seek to end speculation on one of the most persistent rumours throughout South West Victoria.
There are plenty of skeptics about the existence of big cats in regional Victoria - reports have variously claimed escaped panthers from circuses, evolution of domestic cats gone feral, or even Tasmanian Devils come to the mainland; but researcher Michael Moss is quietly confident he will soon have proof of their existence.
"In the last three years I've accumulated 32 alleged sightings of animals, except panthers or pumas," he says, claiming his infra-red camera has been the key to tracking the beasts.
"Any animal with a heartbeat walks in front of it, it triggers the camera off," he says. "I visit it every ten days to two weeks to change the film and check the battery. It is working very well - I've got everything but the big cat."
Many of these sighting have been around the Colac Otway area, but Mr Moss is yet to see one with his own eyes.
"The alleged theory is the United States troops introduced them in the second world war," he said.
"They were ex-mascots and they dumped them in the bush instead of taking them back to the United States."
Having not seen one in action, he's convinced, however, that he's seen the damage they can do - both to domesticated and to native animals.
"I have seen alleged carnage. I've only been coming over for the past three months to the Colac-Otways; I've spent a lot of time on the other side of the state, in Gippsland, and I've seen cattle mutilated in such a way, and I've spoken to people in the Gippsland area that have been farming thirty, forty years... these people know what they're talking about."
"I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I think it's more incompetence than cover-up, that these animals have obviously been ignored for a while..."
"Some of the stock losses I've seen - native animals with their heads ripped off, full-grown dairy cattle walking around with their jaws ripped open, it's the same description, the same behavior."
What does he think about the level of Government inaction to these sightings? At present big cat sightings aren't ranked much higher than UFO sightings in terms of the level of importance placed on it by ministers and their staff...
"Officially, it's pretty disappointing. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I think it's more incompetence than cover-up, that these animals have obviously been ignored for a while."
"In the last five years - especially in the last three years in the Colac-Otways - there appears to have been a breed-up of these animals. Sightings are coming regularly," he says.
"The State Government has invested a lot of political mileage in the Otways; the last thing they're going to say is 'hey everybody - there's a risk if you're bushwalking that you'll come into contact with a big cat', because it would defeat their shutting down of the logging industry for the purposes of tourism, wouldn't it?"
Michael Moss; big cat researcher