6 days ago
Wombat advocates train army of helpers to treat native animals for mange
Paul Sheehy remembers the day a staff member at his Wee Jasper holiday park in southern NSW found a wombat that had been hit by a car.
"We weren't aware, or we had no knowledge about, how to rescue the joey [in its pouch]," he said.
The team made a call to Queanbeyan-based animal rescue group Wildcare.
"From there we basically forged a relationship looking after the local wombats in our part of the world," Mr Sheehy said.
Mr Sheehy has now developed a passion for eradicating a disease that has affected native animals for centuries.
"We were asked [if we] were interested [in working] alongside these guys to help eradicate the mange," he said.
Now, staff at the park keep on the lookout for wombats suffering from sarcoptic mange, a sometimes fatal skin disease caused by mites that burrow under the skin.
Sarcoptic mange was introduced to the Australian landscape during European settlement and infests more than 150 mammalian species, including humans, koalas and wombats.
Elena Guarracino runs a wombat mange eradication program at Wildcare, and has been helping train locals to treat the disease
When the program started, there were two people covering most of the southern highlands, from Young to Bredbo.
"You cannot run a mange program with two people," she said.
In four months, about 140 people have been trained to treat mange in wombats by Ms Guarracino and Wildcare.
Ms Guarracino said the wombats' nature to burrow during the day and forage at dawn and dusk made it difficult to give them the four doses needed to treat mange.
She said mange was treated by either a direct application of topical medication using an extended pole and a scoop of the treatment, or a burrow flap with a receptacle for the treatment to fall onto the wombats when they enter or leave.
Once a wombat is spotted and treated, it is then recorded in an app so it can be monitored.
"We're wanting people to … come on board, come and help, and it's working," Ms Guarracino said.
WomSAT founder and University of Western Sydney Associate Professor Julie Old said wombats were the "underdogs" of the native animal world.
She wanted more citizen scientists to follow the lead of the Wee Jasper park crew and help treat animals for sarcoptic mange.
"The more people we have involved that are trained and know what they're doing and how to go about doing it, it will benefit the wombats."
Both WomSAT and Wildcare have resources for the public to use to learn how to help wombats with mange.
Dr Old said helping wombats had flow-on effects to the surrounding environment.
"They build big burrows so that means they are turning the soil over, which helps plants grow" she said.
"It helps other animals out by providing shelter for other animals as well."
