“An Order in Council made in 1984 and remade in 1997, unprotected the wombat in 193 parishes in eastern Victoria. The Order meant that landowners or occupiers who are engaged in rural production, and permanent employees of these landowners or occupiers, could take or destroy wombats without the need to obtain authorisation under the Wildlife Act. The Order in Council that unprotects the Common Wombat (Bare-nosed Wombat) was revoked by the Governor in Council on 4 February 2020”. Victorian Government, February 2020

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“Common Wombats are protected in Victoria under the Wildlife Act 1975 (Wildlife Act). It is illegal to kill, take, control or harm wildlife, including Common Wombats, under the Wildlife Act without an Authority to Control Wildlife (ATCW)”. Victorian Government, February 2020

Despite the Victorian Government describing the situation for Wombats in Victoria thus:

“In more recent times, wombat populations have been impacted by disease, habitat loss and road kills. These threats, combined with the recent bushfires which have occurred in extensive areas of wombat habitat, warrant a consistent approach. As of 21 January 2020, it is estimated that 21 per cent of wombat habitat has been affected during the recent Victorian bushfires, impacting approximately 19 per cent of the Victorian wombat population”.

This is what they have been doing. Since 2009, the Victorian Government has issued 2,232 permits to kill 39,783 Bare-nosed Wombats, including 2,692 in 2024 alone. Given the climate disasters of fire, flood and drought engulfing the state, this level of government sanctioned killing is beyond comprehension. It gets worse still, unprotected in a significant part of Victoria, the unprotection order was finally lifted in February 2020, following the terrible fires of that summer, so even more were killed without permits. Prior to 1966, a bounty was offered for every Bare-nosed Wombat killed in Victoria, the period from 1926 was particularly cruel.

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Scandals and scandals

It remains staggering to us that the impact of just one cruel act relating Wombats, the most recent a US citizen removing a joey Wombat from its mother, creates a global outcry on social media, while  a government enabling the killing of 40,000 Wombats in just one Australian state and in dire circumstances over a period just 15 years, receives no attention at all. Time this changed don’t you think?

When Europeans arrived in Australia as settlers some 230 years ago, the Bare-nosed Wombat ranged from south-eastern Queensland along the great Dividing Range, through much of Victoria, the southeast of South Australia, Tasmania and on many of the larger Bass Strait Islands.

Fast-forward to 2025, the Bare-nosed Wombat has a fragmented distribution, almost disappearing from the western half of Victoria and is absent from many parts of New South Wales where it once existed. The species has declined in South Australia and is now missing from most Bass Strait Islands.

The species has a single young, the young Wombat (joey) leaves the pouch after seven months and is weened at around fifteen months. Milk dependent young can be fairly large at fifteen months and can be hard to distinguish from mature adults. Wombats live for over 20 years.

Young Wombats can be seen foraging with their mothers. One of the consequences of the terrible fires of the 2019-20 summer was that mother Wombats were killed in the raging fires and died in the open, their milk dependant young sheltering in their burrows, orphaned, and unless rescued, doomed to starve in their burrow.

Images below are from the Cobargo fires in New South Wales in January 2020. The Victorian landscapes were similar. Why then do we still tolerate the killing of so many Wombats when just surviving what the climate brings has become so very difficult?

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Species

The Bare-nosed Wombat Vombatus ursinus is the only living member of its genus Vombatus. The species is similar in appearance to the two other remaining Wombat species, the Southern and Northern Hairy-nosed Wombats, which belong to the genus Lasiorhinus.

The Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat Lasiorhinus latifrons, the smallest of the three species, its habitat once extending across most of the Nullarbor and well into Western Australia, is now largely restricted to South Australia, with the remaining and fragmented populations in Western Australia, most, close to the border with South Australia.

We have significant concerns for the future of Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat , persecution of remaining populations in South Australia, combined with the impacts of climate change heating and drying, may just prove to be too much.  Let us hope that common sense prevails and the Southern Hairy-nosed Wombat does not follow its relative, the Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat Lasiorhinus krefftii, the largest of the three living Wombat species, to the very edge of extinction. The Northern species, its range, early in the last century, extending through parts of Queensland (where it remains), New South Wales and Victoria, is listed as critically endangered and is one of the rarest mammals in the world.

European settlement has proved particularly devastating for Wombat populations and the Bare-nosed Wombat continues to be persecuted in Victoria and elsewhere in its range.

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