28 Nov Homeless wombat
LAOKO -Snowy Mountains Wildlife Rescue Mange program coordinator Elena Guarracino, Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife – Wildlife Heroes Project Manager Stacey Mole and LAOKO president Lisa Petroff at the LAOKO triage centre in May.
LAOKO has received many reports of wombats needing help due to flooded burrows. Wombats have been attacked by other wombats, have ended up under houses and in sheds, when heavy rain and local flooding have meant wombats have nowhere to sleep and there is competition for dry burrows.
The Wildlife Heroes Emergency Flooding Grant has been wonderful and has helped with costs associated with wombat rescues, soft release enclosures, plastic dog kennels for temporary burrows, cameras to monitor wombats, a storage container for equipment and reimbursement for some travel costs associated with these rescues.
One classic example is when we received a call from Jindabyne about a wombat under a property owner’s veranda. One of our volunteers went to investigate and found this soggy wombat :
This wombat was trying to sleep under a veranda so we setup a plastic dog kennel, under the veranda (similar to the photo below) to give the wombat a better, more comfortable place while burrows dried out.
Our volunteer would drive out and check the wombat each day to make sure it wasn’t getting sick. After a few days the wombat had moved on and wombat tracks could be seen at nearby burrows.
The kennel is then taken back, cleaned and stored, ready for the next wombat in need.
This is photo is an example of one of the plastic dog kennels used to house wombats displaced by flooded burrows. These dog kennels were also used for orphan wombats who lost there mothers during the floods.
