{"id":105164,"date":"2025-08-31T15:50:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T15:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/105164\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T15:50:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T15:50:12","slug":"wombat-rescue-launches-pilot-program-in-the-act-to-fight-mange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/105164\/","title":{"rendered":"Wombat Rescue launches pilot program in the ACT to fight mange"},"content":{"rendered":"

A volunteering opportunity involving wombats and a 45-minute walk in a nearby nature reserve might all sound too good to be true.<\/p>\n

But that’s exactly what Wombat Rescue’s new pilot program is providing recruits.<\/p>\n

The hyper-local Community Mange Treatment Program trains residents to treat wombat mange in “their patch” and is attracting new volunteers.<\/p>\n

Around 40 residents in the Urambi Hills region, in Canberra’s south, monitor “burrow flaps”, which deliver a single dose of medicines Cydectin and Bravecto to wombats as they push through the flap to enter their burrow.<\/p>\n

\"burrow<\/p>\n

The volunteers install burrow flaps which deliver a dose of drugs to the wombat as they push into their burrow. (ABC News: Emmy Groves)<\/p>\n

It’s an effective, though not perfect, approach to combating the tiny mange-causing mite, which was introduced to Australia around 200 years ago and has since affected more than 100 species.<\/p>\n

Mange has devastated wombat populations, including Tasmania’s Narawntapu National Park, where more than 95 per cent have been wiped out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“They become so weakened that they will die, usually from just an opportunistic bacterial infection in the environment,” associate professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Tasmania Scott Caver said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a really slow and horrible death that takes about three months, we think, from infection till the time that they die from it.”\"A<\/p>\n

A wombat with mange \u2014 a disease spread by mites that ultimately proves deadly. (Supplied:\u00a0Katja Gutwein)<\/p>\n

Yolandi Vermaak, who founded Wombat Rescue in 2018, said in the ACT, mange was “absolutely everywhere”.<\/p>\n

“Usually, along a riverway \u2014 we have the Murrumbidgee and the Cotter \u2014 and on both sides of both of those rivers are wombats with mange,” she said.<\/p>\n

Of the roughly 600 reported sightings in the ACT government’s online portal, only a quarter of the animals were healthy.<\/p>\n

Micro-volunteering\"Yolandi<\/p>\n

Yolandi Vermaak cradling a joey wombat. (ABC News: Emmy Groves)<\/p>\n

Ms Vermaak said the new group was harnessing community passion by adapting concepts of micro-volunteering, which recognises that people are more likely to volunteer their time in bite-sized chunks.<\/p>\n

“These people don’t necessarily want to become long-term volunteers, but they are passionate about ‘their’ area and helping ‘their’ wombats,” she said.<\/p>\n

“They want to see them heal; they want to see them healthy; they don’t want to see them get hit by cars or die from mange.”<\/p>\n

British expat Kate Stewart was one of the first to sign up.<\/p>\n

\"Kate<\/p>\n

Kate Stewart volunteered for the pilot program after calling Womabt Rescue in an emergency. (ABC News: David Sciasci)<\/p>\n

She knew very little about wombats until she found an injured joey and called Wombat Rescue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We live on the edge of the Urambi reserve,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I called up for some help and I was told about Yolandi and the team.<\/p>\n

“I had a chat with [her] and was really interested in getting involved because there are so many wombats here and the mange problem is so bad.<\/p>\n

“Seeing pictures of [them], and how they suffer and die horrible deaths \u2026 but we can prevent that by just coming out here.”<\/p>\n

Ms Stewart said local residents were sharing territory with the wombats, so they also had a responsibility for their welfare.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got obligations to them \u2014 to not only do no harm, but to actually help them when they’re struggling, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We know that we’re helping these poor wombats.”<\/p>\n

A full-time balancing act<\/p>\n

Occasionally, volunteers are called out to incidents or help with wombat rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

\"cute<\/p>\n

A wombat joey being cared for after a traffic incident. (ABC News: David Sciasci)<\/p>\n

Shelby Hind juggles full-time work alongside the job of frequent wombat carer.<\/p>\n

Sometimes she takes joeys to her public service job to feed them a bottle throughout the day.<\/p>\n

For Ms Hind, balancing so many things is just part of doing her bit.<\/p>\n

“We need these people to help us combat this disease,” she said.<\/p>\n

“That’s the beauty of [the pilot program]. It’s whatever you have time for.”<\/p>\n

\"Volunteers<\/p>\n

The pilot program relies on volunteers to try to install a burrow flap at every burrow. (ABC News: Emmy Groves)<\/p>\n

Ms Vermaak said the number of volunteers available for the two original treatment programs varied \u2014 “sometimes it’s 20, sometimes only six” \u2014 and coverage is currently limited to two locations at a time, totalling approximately 100 to 150 burrows.<\/p>\n

“If we had unlimited resources, we could easily run 20 [programs],” she said.<\/p>\n

“But we can’t be everywhere, [and] volunteers’ time is precious.”<\/p>\n

She said Coombs was her next target location for a community unit, and while mange “reinfection is always an issue\u2026 if you do [treatment] properly, you can avoid it”.<\/p>\n

“We have found when we do treatment programs a certain way, then there’s a large enough area covered in a geographical barrier [and] it can stay mange free,” she said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve had one area mange free up to six years, but I don’t think it’s ever going to be 100 per cent eradicated.”<\/p>\n

Ms Hind is more optimistic.<\/p>\n

“That’s obviously the long-term dream, but for now, we’re doing our part,” she said.<\/p>\n

“If one volunteer can jump on board and treat one wombat or come to a treatment program like this, once a month, that’s an enormous help for us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A volunteering opportunity involving wombats and a 45-minute walk in a nearby nature reserve might all sound too…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[11972,51190,22196,7840,51191,51189,51192,90,56,54,55,24693,4407,51187,51188,51186],"class_list":{"0":"post-105164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-act","9":"tag-burrow-flaps","10":"tag-canberra","11":"tag-community","12":"tag-community-mange-treatment-program","13":"tag-mange","14":"tag-mange-treatment-program","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom","19":"tag-volunteer","20":"tag-wildlife","21":"tag-wombat","22":"tag-wombat-rescue","23":"tag-yolandi-vermaak"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}