Status of northern hairy-nosed wombat,
central rock-rat, numbat and Christmas Island shrew upgraded in latest
threatened species list
Thu 15 Feb 2018 05.24 GMTLast
modified on Thu 15 Feb 2018 05.26 GMT
Four mammals – including the northern
hairy-nosed wombat and the numbat – have been upgraded to endangered or
critically endangered on the updated Australian threatened species list published on
Thursday.
The northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii) has been steadily
contracting its range to a single area within Queensland’s Epping Forest
national park, 855km north-west of Brisbane.
Numbers had been increasing in that park from
a low of 35 in the 1980s to 240 in 2016, according to a census
conducted by the Queensland environment department. The
recovery is due in part to the construction of a predator fence in 2002.
A small insurance colony of about 10 wombats
is held at Richard
Underwood Nature Refuge. The species was moved up from endangered to critically
endangered this year.
Similarly upgraded was the central rock-rat
or antina (Zyzomys pedunculatus) a
native mouse that was rediscovered in the West MacDonnell Ranges of central
Australia in 1996.
It is a critical weight range mammal –
meaning it is the right size to make an ideal snack for a feral cat – and is
one of 20 mammals listed as a priority species for federal government recovery
efforts.
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