A conversation with Ford’s sustainability leader

Have you ever heard of the Tasmanian devil?  It’s actually nothing like the cartoon version—the real devil is a black animal with white markings that’s smaller than a cocker spaniel, and it’s in trouble.  The Tasmanian devil once lived on the continent of Australia but now survives in the wild only on the island state of Tasmania, just off Australia’s south coast.  It’s the largest surviving marsupial carnivore in the world.  A marsupial’s young develop in a pouch on their mother’s belly rather than in a uterus inside their mother’s body.  Other than females with young, the devils are solitary, living in a burrow in the ground during the day and coming out at dusk to feed.  Devils can hunt for prey but much of their diet consists of dead animals—carrion–such as road-killed wallabies and wombats.  A disease spreading across the island since 1996 has decimated the devil population.