Dear Friends

Your help is desperately needed.

The Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombats in South Australia are facing adversity at every turn. There are the issues that effect all of our wildlife - urban development, habitat loss, an increase in farming, road kill and injury, disease and sickness. Then there is the awful, completely inhumane practice of burrow bulldozing - burying wombats alive.

Now, with all the heavy rain, wombats in the Murraylands region of South Australia are drowning.

Entire burrow systems are being completely flooded and wombats are being drowned in their homes. Burrow entrances are also collapsing from the wet, soft soil.

Wombat Awareness Organisation is desperately trying to rescue wombats that have been trapped in their burrows. The lucky ones, where only the first metre or so of the burrow entrance has collapsed, have dug their way out but other burrow entrances have collapsed two to three metres in and the wombats are stuck.

WAO need your help. Monetary donations are always welcome, and very much needed. But they also need pumps and hoses to remove water from burrows, shovels to dig out wombats trapped alive (hopefully in air pockets inside the tunnel systems) and they need man power on the ground.

WAO will also strive to have all culling licenses in the area re-called so that a complete study to ascertain Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombat numbers can be carried out - with all issues the wombats are facing, they are clearly in trouble and need to be protected.

If you can help, please contact Brigitte Stevens on: 0458 737 283, or email brigitte@wombatawareness.com. Their website is www.wombatawareness.com.