G'day from Australia ! I am a northern hairy nosed wombat and I am a very special animal because I am endangered. That means that there are only a few of us left in Australia . I am very sad about this.
My real name is “Lasiorhinus Kreffti” and I live in the Epping Forest National Park, which is in the central part of Queensland . Queensland is a state which is in Australia . I also used to live in other parts of Australia, like Northern Victoria and New South Wales .
Did you know that I am part of the only colony of my type in the whole wide world! How would you like to be the only family left in the world? My relatives and I have to deal with a lot of things like, fires and natural disasters in our homeland. We also get sick and when we die, not many more wombats like us are born. This worries us a lot.
The rangers at the Epping Park National Park have counted about 208 burrows there that we have dug. A burrow is where we live and we sometimes live with other relatives or on our own. We usually dig burrows under trees but do you know how many burrows are actually used by us, the northern hairy nosed wombats in the Epping forest ? Only 179. We are in great danger of extinction.
We love to eat eucalyptus leaves and we also live on flat grasslands. We also look for deep, sandy soil to dig our burrows. We are nocturnal but we do come up for a bit of a look around if the weather is cool and there is a little sun.
Do you know what we look like? We are about one meter long and we weigh about 30 kilograms, with brownish, gray fur. Because of our length and weight, we are the largest herbivore that digs burrows in the world. We are special.
We love to eat grasses and we don't drink much because we get enough water from our diet. We like to eat more on winter nights than summer ones.
We make our babies in the late spring up until mid summer and it takes about 21 days to give birth. We have one baby and it stays in the mother's pouch until it grows up. We live in the wild for about 20 years but in captivity, we live about 26 years.
We are very protected but it is a very hard life that we live, trying to stay safe and alive. |
