Endangered Tasmanian devils flown to Australia's mainland

Wildlife officials in Australia have launched a program to try to save the Tasmanian devil, endangered because of a deadly form of facial cancer.

As part of the conservation project Devil Ark, 15 animals were flown from Tasmania to start a new life in a reserve at Barrington Tops, north of Sydney.

David Schapp, their keeper, said they are part of a program that could save the species from extinction.

"Devil Ark is a part of our ongoing strategy, known as the insurance population, and that's basically a group of devils that have been isolated away from Tasmania on the mainland of Australia," Schapp said.

"Effectively all of mainland Australia is like a large quarantine station where we can hold and breed devils knowing that they will remain free of the disease without any risk of exposure to it."

The plan is to eventually bring 1,000 disease-free Tasmanian devils to the location.

Over the past two decades, about 80 per cent of the carnivorous marsupial Sarcophilus harrisii have been wiped out by the highly contagious devil facial tumour disease (DFTD)

Scientists have been working without success to unlock the secrets of the mysterious disease that threatens to make them extinct within 25 years.

The animals exist in the wild only in Tasmania, but were popularized by the Warner Bros. character that first appeared in the Looney Tunes series of cartoons in 1954. First known as the Devil May Hare and later as the Tasmanian Devil, or Taz, he was portrayed as a dim-witted animal with a voracious appetite, with his effort to find more food a central plot in cartoons.