Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat(03/07/2003)
There are only 110 Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat’s left in the world. Their status is so precarious, even researchers are only allowed to enter the high security
Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat(03/07/2003)
There are only 110 Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat’s left in the world. Their status is so precarious, even researchers are only allowed to enter the high security sanctuary once every three years. This year Catalyst reporter Paul Willis was allowed into the wombat’s territory. His exclusive report follows the scientists trying to discover if the northern hairy nosed wombats have a chance of surviving.
The team are working round the clock trapping and collecting samples from these rarest of all wombats. But for the scientists it’s a race against time – the longer a wombat is in captivity the more stressed it becomes. Their work is crucial in identifying each individual wombat and telling how much inbreeding there is in the population. This is a big problem for endangered animals, if there genetic variation is too low, that is if there has been a lot of inbreeding, the population is very susceptible to disease and is as a whole weaker. These wombats have received the best possible treatment to bring them back from the brink of extinction. But the big question the team must answer is have they found the key to the survival of the Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat?
Narration: In the middle of the vast farmlands of Central Queensland is 300 hectares of forest that hasn’t been cleared. Inside, protected by security fences, is one of Australia’s most endangered mammals – The Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat.
It’s the only place on earth where they still exist. This is the first time in three years that anyone has been allowed into their reserve. Now a team of scientists are descending on this remote population to trap these rare wombats and see how they’re doing. Alan Horsup is heading the research team. He’s determined to bring the northern hairy nosed wombat back from the brink of extinction.
Paul Willis: So how many wombats are in the park at the moment?
Dr Alan Horsup at the last count, that was in 2000. In 2000 ten wombats were killed, probably by Dingoes, that’s 10% of an already dangerously small population. So this new fence now completely encloses the survivors.
Narration: The team have just three weeks in the reserve to find out how the rare wombats are faring.
The northern hairy nosed wombat is a unique animal. It split off from the rest of the wombats 6.5 million years ago. It’s the largest burrowing herbivore in the world and spends 80% of its time underground. It used to exist right down to the Victorian border but now the entire population lives in this one isolated population. As long as all the wombats are all in one place the species is in danger of being wiped out.
Dr Alan Horsup: We’ve got all our eggs in one basket and there are so many risks hanging over this population. There’s major wildfire. There’s disease. There’s just the fact that it’s so small and populations go up and down and this one could dip and go down, halving those risks would make this species more secure
Narration: The ultimate aim for the wombat researchers is to create a second wombat colony somewhere else. Jodie McGill is studying temperature, humidity and soil type, so eventually they can find other locations where conditions are the same.
Jodie McGill My data will actually help in finding a trans location site. We can actually take this data, go to another site. We can test the soil, we can dig down the depths that these burrows are at and test are the temperature and humidity the same.
Narration: But to create a new population first they need to find out if their wombats are breeding and that’s where the trapping comes in.
Dr Alan Horsup: So this is it Paul, we basically use a fishing line, to set a rat trap to catch a wombat.
Paul: So a wombat walks into the trap, what happens
Alan: So a wombat walks into the trap, just mind your eye
Paul: So the wombats safe and sound inside.
Dr Alan Horsup: It is, and not only have we activated the trap, but we’ve activated a switch here which turns the radio transmitter on that’ll send a signal back to camp
Paul: So back at camp you’ll know there’s something in the trap and it’s time to get out here.
Narration: As night falls, the wait for a wombat begins. They’ve been here a week already and so far they’ve only caught one wombat. One person each night stays up checking the radio signals from the traps every hour.
Bleep bleep bleep
This is the tell tale sign he’s looking for. This means the gates are down on one of the traps. Every time the alarm goes off Alan has to make the trek through the n