Help save the Bare-Nosed Wombat

Hallo to all our supporters,

I have been doing our stats (this is what I get to do just before midnight) and was counting the amount of wombats we have been helping.

Last year, 2024, we averaged about 10-15 per month. And this is just direct treatment of wombats.

To give you some context, we have two methods of treatment:

1. Population treatment where we select a large area, typically 1km of riparian area along a river, and we identify all the active burrows, install burrow flaps over those active burrows and refill the medicine cups once a week for 15 weeks. In this case, because we usually treat around 150-200 burrows at a time, we use Cydectin. It's a cattle drench and costs about $1,200 per 15 litre drum. So..math time.. 200 burrowflaps; 20ml of cydectin, once a week for 15 weeks.

2. The other method is when an individual wombat is sighted and we can get close enough to give them a direct treatment. In these cases we use Bravecto, which is a spot-on for dogs. It's much more expensive at $88 per dose, but you need less, usually 2-3 doses would be sufficient (this only kills mites on the wombat, not in their environment thought, but that's a story for another day).

So...we averaged 15 wombats for method 2 - direct treatment. This year however, mange cases have spiked here in Canberra. I'm not so sure it's because mange is increasing. I think it is because more people are aware, more people now know what mange looks like and more people are reporting it.

But August 2025 was our busiest month. We direct treated 55 wombats! Think about the volunteer hours that takes, finding the wombat, sometimes it takes 2 or 3 tries over multiple days before we find the reported wombat. Sitting and waiting patiently until they come out, stalking them while staying downwind and providing life saving treatment. It is an incredible feat. This is a staggering number. And the cost of 55 wombats getting a dose of Bravecto is around $5,000

Almost every  month we do a combination of both methods. It is a costly operation. And absolutely  not possible without the help of those who support us financially.

And this is the message from me..I'm trying to say thank you. Thank you for believing in what we do and supporting us so we can provide these very sick wombats with life giving medicine. Without you, this would simply not be possible.

From each and every wombat, volunteer and me....thank you.

All my love

Yolandi

Links:

• Wombats treated only in August 2025