Four Australian mammals deemed under greater threat of extinction

Status of northern hairy-nosed wombat, central rock-rat, numbat and Christmas Island shrew upgraded in latest threatened species list

Calla Wahlquist

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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