Wildlife Conservation Australia Project #47818

Help save the Bare-Nosed Wombat

by Wombat Support and Rescue NSW/ACT Incorporated

Project Report | Mar 5, 2022
A wisdom of wombats being saved

By Yolandi Vermaak | Project Leader

The project we started at the Brindabella Hills Winery has finally come to an end.

This beautiful location facing the Brindabella mountains with the Murrubmidgee river flowing down below is home to a stunning winery. But it's also home to a small population of our bare-nosed wombats.

Sadly, these wombats, as with a large percentage of wombats across Australia, have been infected with sarcoptic mange. This is a parasite (similar to scabies) that burrows into their skin and cause immense itching, fur-loss, and eventual death.

We set to work and over a period of 12 months we treated them every week while monitoring their progress via motion censor wildlife cameras.

The change now to where we started is huge. They are all healthy, fat and glossy and the female we treated first now has a little joey (baby) of her own who is playful and happy with his mum.

Our thanks as always goes to the landowners who love wildlife, who is willing to help them and willing to allow us access on their property to help these beautiful creatures.

Thank you for your continued support to help us save as many wombats as we can!

Links:

Video of project from start to finish

Permalink

Sep 22, 2021
A wombat named Romeo

By Yolandi Vermaak | Project Leader

Most of our work takes us into the bush, working with wild wombats.

There are not enough facilities to take every wombat that is sick or manged into care. The need is just to big and the resources to few. But for those adult wombats that are sick and are reported, we have a fighting chance to save them.

It takes a long time and lots of dedication and perseverance. We have to track them, find where they live and start treating them, sometimes for months until they are healed. It's a big commitment.

This doesn't solve the problem entirely though. This wombat may be better but mange is incredibly contagious and if one wombat in a population has it, the other wombats will too. We try to implement population treatment programs where we treat every burrow in a specific area, regardless of how many wombats there are.

This is an even bigger and more expensive commitment. It takes hundreds of man hours for a team of volunteers to scout for burrows, map and mark them and install treatment equipment called burrow-flaps. Weekly treatment is required for months.

But when you see results like Romeo you know it's all worth it. Romeo was so badly manged that most of his body was covered in thick plaques which is the result of the sarcoptic mange mites burrowing into his skin. It's thick and hard and can be suffocating. He has lost a lot of fur and his eyes and ears have crusted over. He was almost blind and had to navigate his surroundings by smell and hearing only. He did so remarkably.

In just a few weeks after treatment started Romeo starting losing the dead skin crusts and new skin was starting to form underneath. We kept treating his skin for bleeding as the crusts fell off and left some patches raw and bleeding. But eventually those healed and he is on his way to recovery.

This work, to help wombats out there, is immense, and not possible without the help of those who financially support it.

Thank you providing that support and means for us to do the work we do to save them, one wombat at a time

kind regards

Yolandi Vermaak

Wombat Rescue

Links:

Wombat Romeo's journey during mange treatment

Permalink

May 12, 2021
A wombat named Cotter

By Yolandi Vermaak | Project Leader

The first time I saw Cotter

A couple of months ago, I was climbing a little mountain in search of a manged wombat reported to me, when I got a call that a very sick wombat was spotted near the Cotter campground on the other side of town.

Giving up the search as I couldn't find the first wombat, I went in search of the Cotter wombat. When I found him he was grazing near the river but very evidently manged and very sick. I named him Cotter. He was blind from the thick crusty skin plaques that formed over his eyes. When wombats have mange, they will die without intervention.

His mange treatment program started right there and he was given antibacterial antiseptic spray as well to help his wounds heal and keep flies away. When a wombat has mange, they itch so badly that they scratch until they have deep open wounds.

After his treatment started, weekly searches commenced to find him as I had to keep giving him medicine and needed to find where his burrow was. I finally found him sleeping in a drainpipe where he spent his days as he was too sick to burrow.

Slowly but surely, week after week, there were small improvements. First his eyes started to slowly open as the plaques started to fall off, and the rest of the thick plaques on his body started falling off too

Underneath was new pink skin and finally I could see some new healthy hair growing.

Cotter is a male wombat but not aggressive and very calm. He was fairly tolerant of me being near him and giving him medicine.

Thank you for supporting this journey with saving the bare-nosed wombat species. Every wombat deserves a chance at life and whenever a wombat is called in, they deserve the very best of attention that we can give them. This would not be possible without your kind support. A heartfelt thank you from wombat Cotter too

From the Wombat Rescue team

He can finally see

Links:

Wombat Cotter's journey during mange treatment

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3 4 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.