Wombat Games
Help wombats
Wombat Games
Help wombats
Wombats are tough, burrowing survivors — but they're up against a lot. Here's what's putting them in trouble, and where you can learn more.
Australia's wombats face a stack of threats, and most of them come back to one thing: people. Habitat loss, disease, roads and a changing climate are shrinking their world.
The most serious disease threat to bare-nosed wombats. A tiny burrowing mite (Sarcoptes scabiei) causes relentless itching, thick crusting, hair loss, blindness and deafness — and, untreated, a slow death from starvation. It spreads through shared burrows and has swept through an estimated 70% of bare-nosed wombat populations, wiping some out entirely. The cruel part: it's treatable in the field with the right medication.
Land cleared for farming, housing and roads has degraded or destroyed a huge share of wombat country — by some estimates over 80%. What's left is broken into smaller, isolated patches, which means less food and shelter, and populations too small and scattered to bounce back.
As their habitat shrinks, wombats are forced to cross more roads and are killed by vehicles — often at dawn and dusk — and are more exposed to dog attacks. Slowing down in wombat country, and checking the pouches of animals killed on the road, genuinely saves lives.
Bushfire and drought destroy burrows and dry up food, and wombats are still sometimes culled as "pests" on farmland. Spare a thought for the Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat, too — one of the world's rarest mammals, with only a few hundred left in the wild.