Wombats may well look slow and cumbersome but appearances can be deceiving. While we know they can move very quickly over short distances, it seems that they can also cover large distances, up to 4kms, at night.

 

PhD student Alison Matthews from Charles Sturt University’s Institute for Land, Water and Society is currently monitoring the movements of wombats in Kosciuszko National Park at Perisher Valley as part of her research on the effects of climate change on the distribution and resource use of grazing mammals in the Australian Alps.

 

Alison, who has trapped and collared five wombats so far, is using GPS data logging and radio tracking to discover how far the wombats roam along and above the snowline (1500m).

 

“One male wombat is moving at night to the top of Mt Perisher at 2000m,” says Alison. “It will be interesting to see what he does in winter when everything is deep in snow. There are two at 1500m, and another two at around 1700m.”

 

Alison has found out that the wombat that lives around Mt Perisher, over a three week period, covered an area of 500ha and on average of four kilometres a night.

 

“That’s about 10 times bigger an area than we expected,” says Alison who is studying Common Wombats (Vombatus ursinus). “It’s a really exciting discovery.”

 

The wombat also used at least six different burrows during the day over the three weeks.

 

“It’s surprising that, even though wombats are charismatic, we know little about them,” says Alison whose findings will add to the limited ecological research done on wombats in Australia.

 

Perhaps that’s because the wombats are difficult to catch as Alison who has spent many a long night up in the mountains would agree too.

 

“They are very smart,” says Alison. “You have to use stealth.”

 

Alison, who will be back in the mountains in July, is asking that anyone who spots one of the wombats she has collared and ear tagged with a fluorescent tag to contact her with details of where and when they were seen, and if possible, the colour of the tag.

 

“Basically they could be anywhere along the Kosciuszko Road, from Perisher Valley down towards Wragges Creek and up to Rennix Gap, or within the resort area or cross-country ski trails,” she says.