Wombats and landholders (that’s right, its not just farmers that kill wombats!) have had a long standing battle. With two parties as tuff and stubborn as each other there is simply no way either can win.
In 2010, the Wombat Awareness Organisation wanted to find solutions and see if both parties could share the land and developed the Wombat Mitigation Program. Starting on 72 properties in the Murraylands of South Australia the ground breaking work began. Each property owner answered an extensive survey and gave us a very candid insight to the treatment of wild wombats. Startling facts such as every participating property had killed wombats on their property yet only 5% had applied for a ‘Destruction Permit’ to legally kill wombats. Also the ‘economic costs’ wombats generated were incredibly low – on average just $200 per property per year. In fact more money was spent on trying to eradicate wombats than leaving them be.
As time progressed easy, effective, cheap alternatives were found. To every problem there was a simple answer until there were no more problems to solve, still the killing continued. WAO even offered some owners 5 times what the wombats cost them annually but to no avail. It has become obvious that the actual problem may not be the wombats. There are plenty of farmers that do not have a problem with the resident wombats – they go around them and accept that they are present. This group of amazing people report no population increases and do not create bigger problems. A lot of complaints are largely unsubstantiated and seen for what they truly are. We see large properties (in excess of 1000 acres) with the wombats taking up less than two acres