Tucked away in their mothers’ pouches, three tiny wombat joeys have unknowingly marked a new era for their species.<\/p>\n
The infants are the first wild-born northern hairy-nosed wombats at a population rehabilitation site in Powrunna State Forest, near St George in south-west Queensland.<\/p>\n
Once common across eastern Australia, by the 1980s only 35 northern hairy-nosed wombats remained in Queensland, after land clearing and pests destroyed much of their habitat.<\/p>\n
Conservation work since then has increased the population.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Powrunna State Forest reserve is not accessible to the public.\u00a0 (Supplied: Queensland Department of Environment and Science)<\/p>\n
There are roughly 400 in Epping Forest National Park in central Queensland, and about 20 in the Richard Underwood Nature Reserve south of Surat, west of Brisbane.<\/p>\n
Queensland’s Department of Environment started relocating a group of the critically endangered marsupials to a 2,800-hectare site at Powrunna State Forest in May 2024.<\/p>\n
While the three youngest residents have not been spotted directly, Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation regional director Rachel Chesher said bumps in a trio of females’ pouches were hard to miss on trail cameras.<\/p>\n
“Everyone that’s been involved in the project is just really over the moon to hear this news,” she said.<\/p>\n
“To see that they’ve actually bred there, it shows they’re settling in.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thirty-six wombats have been moved to Powrunna State Forest since 2024. (Supplied: Queensland Department of Environment and Science)<\/p>\n
In June, the department moved 11 wombats to Powrunna from Epping Forest, joining the 25 relocated since 2024.<\/p>\n
“There was a fair bit of work that had to go into the site,” Ms Chesher said.<\/p>\n
“There’s been a lot of infrastructure out there, fencing, water stations.<\/p>\n
“To have some born on site within that turnaround is really another mark of how successful the project’s been.”<\/p>\n
The short-term goal of the project is to establish three self-sustaining northern hairy-nosed wombat colonies in Queensland.<\/p>\n
Wombat Foundation ambassador Leanne Brosnan said that was her dream, too.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Leanne Brosnan says northern hairy-nosed wombats are survivors.\u00a0 (ABC Southern Queensland: Tobi Loftus)<\/p>\n
“It’s all about having thriving populations across their former range,” Ms Brosnan said.<\/p>\n
“That creates sustainability, genetic diversity and safety because you’ve spread your eggs over different baskets.<\/p>\n
“That’s what will really mean they’ve come back from the brink.”<\/p>\n
The species’ success against the odds prompted a campaign by the Wombat Foundation to make the northern hairy-nosed wombat a mascot for the Brisbane 2032 Olympics.<\/p>\n
“We have pitched to the Olympic Committee that we would love to see the northern hairy-nosed wombat as an incredible Queenslander be the mascot,” Ms Brosnan said.<\/p>\n
“That would raise the profile of the species incredibly.<\/p>\n
“Many people don’t know they exist. They’re very surprised to hear there’s a Queensland wombat.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Wombat Foundation has pitched the northern hairy-nosed as a mascot for the Brisbane 2032 Olympics. (Supplied: The Wombat Foundation)<\/p>\n
She was confident that putting the wombats on the world stage would help in their fight for survival.<\/p>\n
“The ultimate long-term plan is to have enough northern hairy-nosed wombats that we can release them back into the wild,” Ms Brosnan said.<\/p>\n
“Keeping going against all odds is a testament to the Olympic spirit, as far as I’m concerned.”<\/p>\n
The three newborn joeys are likely to spend the next 10 or so months inside their mother’s pouches before venturing out into Powrunna State Forrest themselves.<\/p>\n
Once fully grown, they would be among the largest burrowing marsupials in the world, growing up to a metre long and weighing up to 30 kilograms and ideally helping to reproduce future generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tucked away in their mothers’ pouches, three tiny wombat joeys have unknowingly marked a new era for their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[4696,17743,97533,97532,5905,97534,90,56,54,55,4407,64755],"class_list":["post-229588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-conservation","tag-extinction","tag-mascot","tag-northern-hairy-nosed-wombats","tag-olympics","tag-powrunna","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife","tag-wombats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229588","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=229588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}