Carrot soup, antibiotics and 10 healthy wombats: How an iconic Australian species is surviving the River Murray flood
Volunteers are working to rescue stranded wombats in South Australia's RiverlandThe environment department says 3,600 animals have been euthanased since the floods beganThat does not make her job any easier.The floods have soaked areas that had been dry for decades, undermining the burrows of southern hairy-nosed wombats throughout the region.
"If they don't get out of the burrow in time, they're drowning, [or] they're getting stuck in the mud and then eventually starving to death," Ms D'Crus said. The Wombat Awareness Organisation volunteer has state government approval to check on the animals that have become isolated by floodwaters.Ms D'Crus and a crew take to the swollen river in search of wombats in need most days.
"We're not just dealing with a wombat that's been displaced, we're then dealing with wombats stuck on islands that are just starving because there's not enough food out there for them," she said.Wombats can only be taken into care if they are in dire need of support.
"They just wanted to be left alone when they came here, which was hard because they all needed a lot of help."Ms Stevens used 20 kilograms of carrots a day to make carrot soup, which she hand-fed to the wombats using a syringe until they regained their strength."He was the only survivor out of 24 wombats, so there was 23 dead wombats around him and he was the last one surviving, so he's very thin," she said.Others needed antibiotics to heal infected paws.
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