Guy finds rare, valuable pelt at garage sale, runs into red tape

When Bill Warren found an unusual pelt at a garage sale, he thought it might be interesting – it turned out that it was. The pelt belonged to a thylacine, or as it is more commonly known, a Tasmanian tiger.

The price on the pelt was $5, a fraction of the $70,000+ that it might be worth – if he is able to sell it, which is tricky because Warren has run into some legal red tape. In the United States, the thylacine is still listed as an endangered species. An Australian auction house has already entered negotiations to purchase the pelt, but due to the endangered species classification, it is illegal for him to sell the pelt over Californian state lines. Warren will also have to submit his pelt for expensive testing to confirm that it did indeed come from a thylacine.

For the record, the thylacine was listed as being extinct in 1936 and declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 1982, after 50 years had passed without a confirmed sighting of a thylacine in the wild.

In Warren’s own words:

It’s like putting a Brontosaurus on the endangered species list. It’s driving me nuts.

It seems simple, but the reality is a little more complicated. Although Tasmania has a relatively small landmass, there are still vast expanses of land that are relatively inaccessible to humans. Unconfirmed sightings of Tasmanian tigers are reported each year, no just from Tasmania but from mainland Australia, and in 1997, from the highlands of Western New Guinea. [Signs on San Diego via Neatorama]