{"id":215193,"date":"2026-01-03T18:09:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T18:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/215193\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T18:09:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T18:09:16","slug":"wildlife-carers-warn-people-to-watch-out-for-puggle-burrows-this-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/215193\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife carers warn people to watch out for puggle burrows this summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The veterinary team at Healesville Sanctuary, north-east of Melbourne, is warning landowners to be careful while gardening or renovating after receiving a pair of orphaned puggles that need their care.<\/p>\n

The baby echidnas were found when their burrows were accidentally destroyed by people doing new-year renovations.<\/p>\n

One was accidentally dug up by an excavator clearing a paddock, while the other was found under a slab of concrete at a building site.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

One of the puggles gets a check over and a cuddle from the vets at Healesville Sanctuary. (Supplied: Zoos Victoria)<\/p>\n

Healesville Sanctuary’s life sciences manager Gerry Ross said it was common for female echidnas to create burrows in random places at the end of the year.<\/p>\n

“Often they choose these locations that we might see as maybe a bit of a silly spot or inconvenient, but for them a mulch pile or a burn pile is actually quite a protected environment for a puggle to be in,” Ms Ross said.<\/p>\n

An Australian icon<\/p>\n

Echidnas are egg-laying mammals called monotremes.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Puggles are covered with soft hair that will eventually turn into spines.\u00a0 (Supplied: Zoos Victoria)<\/p>\n

They do not have teats to express milk like other animals, rather the mother’s milk is excreted from mammary glands on the stomach in a way that looks like sweating.<\/p>\n

Often the mother echidna will feed the puggles and then go off wandering for a few days at a time, meaning the young can be left alone in the burrow for up to 10 days.<\/p>\n

“They [the puggles] will eat 10 to 40 per cent of their body weight at those feeds, and then because the burrow is quite a cool environment the puggles go into a torpor, which is like a sleep state, and slowly digest that milk until mum comes back again,” Ms Ross said.<\/p>\n

“Mum stashes the puggle in a burrow and backfills the burrow so that it’s really well protected and a constant temperature.”<\/p>\n

This does mean the puggles can be vulnerable as the burrows are hidden.<\/p>\n

Keeping an eye out<\/p>\n

Echidnas are usually found in open heathland, forests, scrubs or grasslands.<\/p>\n

In poor weather, they will often shelter under bushes or burrow into soil.<\/p>\n

With people more likely to be out in the garden or clearing bush this summer, Ms Ross said it paid to keep a look out for any wildlife that might have inadvertently made their home in a wood heap or building site.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Gerry Ross says it is common to see injured wildlife this time of year.\u00a0 (Supplied: Zoos Victoria)<\/p>\n

“We do see puggles come in from time to time that have been dug up in burn heaps or mulch piles,” she said.<\/p>\n

“So it’s really important for people to to be thinking about what wildlife they might be disturbing when they’re doing work on their property around this time of year.”<\/p>\n

It is illegal to pick up or move an echidna from its natural surroundings.<\/p>\n

The vets at Healesville are able to handle the puggles with relative ease as their spiky spines are not yet fully developed.<\/p>\n

Each echidna’s spine forms from a single hair.<\/p>\n

The biggest threats to echidnas come from feral dogs and foxes, as well as habitat loss from land clearing and development.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A puggle receives a check over from the vets at Healesville Sanctuary.\u00a0 (Supplied: Zoos Victoria)<\/p>\n

If an echidna is found in a backyard, people should keep pets away and allow the echidna to find its own way out again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The veterinary team at Healesville Sanctuary, north-east of Melbourne, is warning landowners to be careful while gardening or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[3648,1568,130093,130095,126,111,139,69,130094,147,406,3651],"class_list":{"0":"post-215193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animal","9":"tag-construction","10":"tag-echidna","11":"tag-healesville-sanctuary","12":"tag-native","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-puggle","17":"tag-science","18":"tag-wildlife","19":"tag-zoo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}