Coming across a wombat in the wild is a rare treat - they're usually shy creatures, and only come out at night.
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But the cuddly furballs are in trouble, as individuals throughout their range are being disfigured by a parasite: mange. Their skin becomes concrete and cracks, they get fly blown and walk around with open wounds. They lose their hearing and their eyesight. They rot to death -- often dying from secondary infections, starvation, or from wandering blindly onto the road.
Wombats seem to be particularly vulnerable to mange -- an infestation of parasitic mites. Other animals usually just shake it off, but in wombats it has a 100 percent kill rate if left untreated.
I think once you see the pain that these animals are in, and when you see that the government's doing nothing, you just step up.
- Melina Budden, Wombat Warrior
Some local populations of wombats have been nearly wiped out by mange.
With Voice of Real Australia meet the people fighting for this iconic species' future.
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