Tasmania hopes to become the largest island in the world to eradicate foxes after biologists revealed that several hundred could be breeding on the island.
Rumours that the island had been invaded by the unwelcome predators have circulated for years but it was only confirmed earlier this yearthat they have established a breeding population.
There are fears they will devastate rare native mammals which have already been driven close to extinction on the Australian mainland, such as bandicoots, bettongs and quolls.
Frogs, blue-tongue lizards, pademelons (a type of small wallaby), and penguins are among the 80 other species which would also be at grave risk.
This week the Tasmanian Government launched a A$56 million ($64.8 million), 10-year campaign to eradicate foxes. It says a fox population could cost farmers and the eco-tourism industry A$20 million a year.
The public will be recruited to carry out surveys of where foxes are living, by looking for their droppings or scat. The animals will then be hunted down and destroyed, either by trapping, shooting, den fumigation or poison baiting.
Biologists believe there are between 50 and several hundred foxes in Tasmania. Females are capable of producing a litter of up to 10 cubs each year, with young foxes reaching sexual maturity after 10 months.
Foxes have benefited in recent years from a mystery facial tumour virus which is wiping out the Tasmanian devil, a fierce carnivorous marsupial which used to prey on fox cubs and compete with adult foxes for food.
The European red fox was introduced by British settlers for hunting in the mainland state of Victoria in the 1850s. Since then they have thrived in all but the most arid desert regions, killing lambs, attacking calves and wreaking havoc among small marsupials.
Australia's dismal record of mammal extinctions in the last 200 years - the worst in the world - is in large part due to the fox.
