Conservation and Land Management has revealed it keeps a record of strange animal sightings in WA – and the file is bulging with hundreds of reports.

Despite claiming big cats and thylacines are not roaming the state, CALM has records of sightings dating to the 1930s.

Victorian thylacine hunter Michael Moss obtained details through Freedom of Information legislation.

Included in the documents is a 1994 letter from then environment minister Kevin Minson saying it was possible small numbers of an unidentified species existed in the wild.

"It is for this reason that reliable and detailed reports of strange animal sightings are worth investigating and recording," Mr Minson said in response to a report of cougar sightings in Moora.

Mr Moss, who has filmed what he believes to be a thylacine in South Gippsland, said he was surprised by the extent of CALM's reports, most of which came from the South-West.

Similar files are kept by conservation departments in other states.

Mr Moss said he believed many more sightings went unreported because people feared being ridiculed.

"A lot of farmers are convinced there is something out there," he said. "These are not people who go round shooting their mouths off."

CALM senior zoologist Dr Peter Mawson said the department's mystery animal file was not an admission that big cats and thylacines were breeding in the WA bush, but CALM would continue to update it and investigate sightings. Most strange beasts sighted were mangy dogs, foxes or feral cats.

• Story originally published by:
The Sunday Times via news.com.au, Perth / Australia - Nov 18.01