The healthy devils are unvaccinated, and have been released in an area free of the devastating devil facial tumor disease.

Environment Minister Matthew Groom said the release was the first step in re-establishing a disease free, wild population of devils on the Forestier and Tasman peninsulas.

‘‘We are at a critical juncture in the fight to save the Tasmanian devil and the success of the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program has provided a window of opportunity to refocus and redouble our efforts toward supporting healthy populations in the wild and securing the future of the Tasmanian devil,’’ he said.

‘‘The Save the Tasmanian Devil Program has worked very hard to maximise the success of the trial release at Narawntapu National Park in September, and a great deal has been learnt that will inform how this and future releases are managed.

‘‘The devils chosen for this release have been carefully selected for wild traits and good genetics to assist in boosting the existing population of approximately 20 healthy devils already living on the nearby Tasman Peninsula.’’

A devil-proof fence at Dunalley and a natural barrier at the Dennison Canal is expected to ensure facial tumor disease does not recur in that area.

Some of the devils that have been released are the progeny of those removed from the Forestier area when it was subject to disease.

Save the Tasmanian Devil program manager David Pemberton said earlier this month that the best result would be for devils to stay close to their release location to enable monitoring and supplementary feeding.

He said STDP would be trapping the released devils in December and January to monitor their progress.

All Tasmanian devils were removed from the diseased Forestier population in 2012.