101. Julie Old: Wombats, saving endangered species, and the difficulties of studying wild animals

Julie Old is as Associate Professor at Western Sydney University. We talk about her experiences and research with wombats, various aspects of wombat behavior, conservation efforts, challenges such as sarcoptic mange and roadkill, the Northern hairy-nosed wombat's critically endangered status and efforts to translocate them safely, and much more.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps
0:00:00: How Julie got into working with wombats
0:03:14: What are wombats?
0:11:40: How Julie started researching wombats
0:15:34: Sarcoptic mange in wombats
0:25:22: Saving the critically endangered Northern hairy-nosed wombat
0:36:00: How to prevent wombats from becoming roadkill
0:41:46: How do I know a wombat was there without seeing the wombat directly?
0:44:11: What research could I do on wombats and (social) decision-making?
0:47:51: How do wombats navigate in burrows?
0:52:42: How the Australian wildfires in 19/20 affected wombats
0:55:41: WomSAT
0:59:29: The Wombat Foundation
1:01:06: How to translocate a population of wombats
1:08:35: A book or paper more people should read
1:10:53: Something Julie wishes she'd learnt sooner
1:12:11: Advice for PhD students/postdocs

Podcast links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Julie's links

• Website: https://geni.us/old-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/old-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/old-twt

Ben's links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

References & links

The scientific park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epping_Forest_National_Park
The Wombat Foundation: https://www.wombatfoundation.com.au/
WomSAT: https://www.womsat.org.au/womsat/

French & Whatley (2002). Diary of a Wombat.
Mayadunnage, Stannard, West & Old (2024). Spatial and temporal patterns of sarcoptic mange in wombats using the citizen science tool, WomSAT. Integrative Zoology.
Old, Hunter & Wolfenden (2018). Who utilises bare-nosed wombat burrows?. Australian Zoologist.
Old, Sengupta, Naraya, & Wolfenden (2018). Sarcoptic mange in wombats—A review and future research directions. Transboundary and Emerging Diseases.
Old & Deane (2003). The detection of mature T‐and B‐cells during development of the lymphoid tissues of the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Journal of Anatomy.
Old & Deane (2000). Development of the immune system and immunological protection in marsupial pouch young. Developmental & Comparative Immunology.
Park (1962). The Adventures of the Muddle-headed Wombat.
Stannard, Wynan, Wynan, Dixon Mayadunnage & Old (2021). Can virtual fences reduce wombat road mortalities?. Ecological Engineering.
Strahan's mammals of Australia (2023).
Woodford (2002). The secret life of wombats.

Chapters

• 0:00 How Julie got into working with wombats
• 3:14 What are wombats?
• 11:40 How Julie started researching wombats
• 15:34 Sarcoptic mange in wombats
• 25:22 Saving the critically endangered Northern hairy-nosed wombat
• 36:00 How to prevent wombats from becoming roadkill
• 41:46 How do I know a wombat was there without seeing the wombat directly?
• 44:11 What research could I do on wombats and (social) decision-making?
• 47:51 How do wombats navigate in burrows?
• 52:42 How the Australian wildfires in 19/20 affected wombats
• 55:41 WomSAT
• 59:29 The Wombat Foundation
• 1:01:06 How to translocate a population of wombats
• 1:08:35 A book or paper more people should read
• 1:10:53 Something Julie wishes she'd learnt sooner
• 1:12:11 Advice for PhD students/postdocs

Transcript

[This is an automated transcript with many errors]

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [00:00:00] These kind of episodes are always the most fun ones to me in that sense, because they are, how should I put it, I mean, as I said, like many of the interviews I do are with people from my own field, so those are conversations I might have anyway.

At a conference or, you know, whatever after some talk. But I always enjoy the ones where it's basically like without the podcast, this probably would never have happened because there's just probably no way our paths would have crossed otherwise.

Julie Old: Yep.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, So yeah, so really looking forward to talking about wombats today.

Something that I think most people don't know all that much about, at least when I, you know. When I tell people my fascinating wombat facts they seem to not ever know any of them. So, they're very appreciative though. Um, uh, but, But actually I wanted to start a little bit with that because I, my intuition is that in Australia people know a lot more about that.

Is that correct or not? I don't know. For us, I guess it's like this slightly weird animal that's really far away. I was just curious basically because, you know, [00:01:00] I always try and also trace like how people got into the research they do and that kind of stuff. And so I was just curious how in your childhood, like how not normal, but like, present, I guess, wombats were.

Julie Old: so where I grew up, there, there aren't any wombats. But growing up in Australia, we have a really big marsupial fauna. And so, you know, growing up we're quite used to reading books like Blinky Bill, which perhaps you've heard about that one. It's about a koala though.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I was going to say that's a koala. Yeah. Okay.

Julie Old: And we have the muddle headed wombat as well.

But yeah there's some cool books like that. Yeah. Yeah, that,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, that's, that's basically how I heard about wombats the first time. So, I mean, I was born in England, but I grew up mainly in Germany. But I guess the Muddle-headed Wombat, but I would have been read to, whilst we were still in England. So that's I think that's, is that an English speaking classic, or is it just like an Australian English speaking classic?

I don't know,

Julie Old: yeah, I would say it's an Australian book. 

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, for some reason I had this [00:02:00] as a kid and I think it was one of my one of my favorite books as a child. I thought it was hilarious. I haven't read it in a while. Um, But yeah, no, I love that book. Um, See if anyone has kids that speak English.

Check out the muddle-headed wombat.

Julie Old: I was going to say I was going to say with the wombats as well in Australia, we have a really big population of people from overseas now, and I suppose we always have, but we have more and more people coming from overseas and. An interesting thing that happened to me at work was somebody, you know, said, Oh, Julie, you work on wombats.

And I said, yes. And they said what is a wombat? They didn't know what a wombat was. And they thought that it was a flying, you know, bat like creature. And I can't think of anything more funny than that. But anyway, yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, maybe you should try and teach them.

Julie Old: Yes.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Give them little, probably pretty big wings actually, not little

Julie Old: Yeah. Puts a whole new [00:03:00] spin on, you know, pigs flying. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, no, we already have enough species of bats. We don't need the three more. Anyway, I was curious maybe can we start by basically how you started working on, well, actually, maybe, you know, let's, for the people who really don't know that much, maybe what are wombats? 

So, can you give like a, Yeah, a brief summary of what they are, what they do. Yeah.

Julie Old: So wombats are marsupials. So marsupials um, are one of the three groups of mammals. Obviously there's eutherian mammals like us and cows and cats and gophers. And marsupials that they differ from eutherian mammals in that they give birth to immature young. So little, tiny. Baked beans. Hopefully, you know what a baked bean is.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I do,

Julie Old: Yeah, good.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: beans, yeah.

Julie Old: And they have pouches. They are one of the marsupials that have pouches. That's the mum. They are [00:04:00] herbivores, so they eat grasses and seds mostly. And because they spend so much time eating rough stuff, they have continuously growing teeth, which is quite, quite a cool thing about wombats. They can run surprisingly fast. They're nocturnal. They dig large burrows underground, so they have bare nose wombat. And we have the hairy nosed wombats species, two of those, and they have warrens, so they're much bigger and more diverse.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, What's a Warren?

Julie Old: Yeah, so a warren is a big Burrow, I suppose, but it's got many openings and it's very complicated.

Whereas a bear nose wombat just has a burrow, which is pretty much one, maybe two entrances and exits. Warren's take up a huge amount of space as well. So in South Australia, you can see the Southern hairy nose wombat burrows from space.[00:05:00]

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, that's pretty vague. But, is it still the or maybe, as a slightly broader question, but that also relates to this What's the kind of social structure of these animals? I mean, do they live in Wisdoms, I guess, is the plural, right? But in yeah, basically I was just curious with the difference between basically whether also more animals live in a warren or just each animal has more space.

But maybe first, before we answer that, kind of, yeah, what's the social structure of these animals?

Julie Old: Yeah. So mostly they, we would regard them as small. antisocial, or they, you know, they hang out by themselves. Bare nosed wombats, which is the species that I most commonly work on, they have, they can have, you know, up to 10, 12, 13 burrows, and they will move around to them. at all different times. So they might have a different burrow every night.

But then some of those burrows might be in the same area as another wombat lives. So [00:06:00] they'll share them, but usually not together.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Oh,

Julie Old: Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: why? I mean, why do they, you know, not have basically one, one home that they dig for themselves.

Julie Old: Yeah, I suppose they, you know, they can get up to about 40 kilos. They're a big, pretty big, hefty animal and so they need a lot of food. So they have a big home range and you know, you, you go out and you eat the food that you need to eat. And then, you know, when you need to go home, you just go to the closest one, I suppose.

I don't think there's any Particular reason why they do it that way, but yeah, it's probably convenience maybe.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It's like a traveling salesman or something who then goes to the nearest hotel.

Julie Old: Yeah, exactly.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I was a little bit surprised when you kind of said that they're in a sense antisocial because I've seen some videos of wombats where they, People, it seems like, at least from some videos, you can almost treat them like pets.

They seem very playful and you know, they don't say what is they don't [00:07:00] seem like aggressively antisocial in that sense. 

Julie Old: The little ones, they're really cute, really lovely. And then they grow up and they might be like humans in a lot of ways. You know, they become a grumpy teenager and they like their own space. They definitely like their own space. I ha I am aware of wombats not liking people in their area and, you know, attacking them.

So they're, because they are, they're really big animals, right? So they're 40 kilos, they're big teeth, big claws. You don't want to mess with a wombat. Most of my research is really hands off. So non invasive stuff, just because of that reason. So, yeah. And yeah, on YouTube and. On social media, you always see a cute little wombat and they are gorgeous little wombats.

But yeah, when they get big, you don't want to mess with a big wombat. Yeah. And I suppose in terms of being antisocial, I probably shouldn't say antisocial. I would say tolerate each other. I mean, I have seen large, you know, open areas where they'll graze sort of [00:08:00] together, but they'll be sort of spaced, you know, they'll like their own space, if you like.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: okay. Yeah. So there's always, yeah, like they keep the distance.

Julie Old: Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, but then even in the in the, even the What was it again? The warren. Even in those, it's still only one animal, usually.

Julie Old: Yeah. Sometimes there can be multiple animals in there as well. Yeah. And the, we don't really know that much about Northern hairy nosed wombats because they're critically endangered. So we're still learning a lot about them, but they are regarded as quite skittish animals. They're, you know, they see a human, they'll run away.

They're definitely not used to humans in that regard.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, we'll talk a lot more about the Northerns, because it seems like there's quite an interesting history of those, especially recently. As a I guess the spoiler would be they were, I think actually they thought they were extinct at some point, I read, and then they found a few more and now it seems like you're [00:09:00] managing to, to keep them as a species so that they're not going to die out.

But yeah, we'll talk more about that later. Kind of last kind of, kind of generic, like what are wombats kind of question is like, what are their. What are their predators? What are their natural threats?.

Julie Old: Yeah, sure. So the things that wombats are threatened by, I suppose, is things like predators. Yes. So the little ones will can be taken by foxes and wild dogs. They do have some strategies they can use to reduce the incidence of predatory behavior on them. They tend to use their bottoms to block entrances and, was just actually reading a newspaper article for the 1800s just the other day and, interesting story, and I did see that somebody's dog went in a burrow and one of the wombats, they squashed it up against the top [00:10:00] of the burrow.

So they do use their bottoms as defense. So that's one of the, wild dogs is a problem and we can talk about that in more detail when we talk later about Northern hairy nosed wombats as well. But other things that impact wombats, of course, worldwide, just like many species, is habitat reduction. So, in Australia, we've had a lot of habitat converted to farmland forestry as well is causing problems. And probably the two biggest Threats to wombats, particularly bare nosed wombats, are sarcoptic mange and roadkill. So, yeah, wombats, big animals, they get hit by cars. It's not a good outcome for either.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, is, I just had a random question just because Something you mentioned right at the beginning that is still in my head. I thought all, I think you said wombats are marsupials that have pouches. I thought all marsupials have pouches, or is that wrong?[00:11:00]

Julie Old: No, not all marsupials have pouches. A lot of the South American opossums, they don't have pouches. And, yeah, obviously the boys don't have pouches either. It's only the girls.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I had never thought about that.

Julie Old: So the pouch, yeah, in the pouch, there's the teats. So yeah 

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, it makes sense once you say it, but I just never, I always, yeah, basically I always you know, I guess because the pouches are such an unusual feature in general, like across all species I guess because it's such an identifying thing, I always assumed all marsupials always had a pouch.

But yeah, I guess, well, I mean.

Julie Old: yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. , before we kind of start talking a bit more specifically about some of the one stuff, I'm just curious kind of basically how you got into doing research on Wombats. So, um, Yeah, I mean, I actually don't know, I think you didn't, did you start off doing Wombat research or I think you started off doing other stuff, right?[00:12:00]

Julie Old: Yeah. So, I can start at the beginning. So I grew up on a farm in the mid North coast of New South Wales. It's pretty much in between Sydney and Brisbane. If you know your, your cities in Australia about there it's. Bush and it's close to the beach and things like that. So that's on the coast and there's lots of animals around or being on a farm.

I had lots of pets, things like that. Always loved animals. Always wanted to work with animals. Thought about becoming a vet. Didn't really want to do that. So did biology at uni and was offered a position to do honours. And I thought, yes. And there was a project looking at the immune system of the tamar wallaby.

And that just sounded fantastic. And the thing about immunology is that I really like that as well. Because for me, immunology has a little bit of everything. It's got a little bit of biochem, it's got microbiology, it's just got a little bit of [00:13:00] everything you can possibly think of. And you know, if you work with animals as well, you get a little bit of, you Maybe hands on, get to hang out with animals as well, so it's great. So I did honours on um, the Tamar Wollabee, and

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Sorry, honors is an Australian thing, right? Where you do like a year of research or something like that?

Julie Old: yeah, so we have Bachelor of Science degree, and then then you can do honours, so it's a one year thing before you go into a PhD.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Ah, okay, so it is kind of like a master's in that sense, just,

Julie Old: Yeah, so we have masters as well now, yeah, yep, but you know, I'm probably older than, and yeah 

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I think it's just an Australia. I've heard, I basically, I've heard from Australians saying this honest thing, and in the UK I think it just means you like, didn't fail any module or something like that. So I think like the, it is the same word, but used quite differently actually. Uh, But yeah.

Anyway. You did like basically a one year research project or,

Julie Old: yeah, and then I did my PhD on the development of the marsupial immune tissues. And I [00:14:00] was really interested in that because marsupials are, you know, little tiny baked beans, and they don't have mature immune tissues. So, you know, they're born into this world that has, microbes everywhere, and yet they managed to survive.

So that to me was pretty cool, and amazing. So that's how I got into that area of research. Then I ended up doing a postdoc, and then I did a job came up at Western Sydney, which is where I work now, working on animal science. And I, you know, obviously a teaching and research position. So that was.

Fantastic. And it was in animal science and zoology, which was, you know, fantastic. And some of the researchers in my school were doing other things as well. So there were some ecologists, there were some agricultural scientists, there were lots of different people working on different things. And one of the things I got involved in was [00:15:00] doing some spotlighting surveys out in the, basically the bush in the Blue Mountains.

And I went out there and we were spotlighting and we saw wombats, which was really exciting because I hadn't seen wombats

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: just briefly, what's the spotlighting survey?

Julie Old: Oh, okay. So you have to shine a torch on an animal and their eyes shine back so you can see them. And so you can do spotlighting as an ecologist.

Spotlighting is done to count and all different sorts of things. So it's a big thing. a field research technique. So we go out and we spotlight animals. And I would go out and before it got dark, you'd get ready, you know, to do your surveying. And I would see wombats out during the day and they had sarcoptic mange.

So this sarcoptic mange is caused by a mite. So it's equivalent of scabies in humans. So the same sort of thing. And it it infects approximately, you know, about [00:16:00] 150 mammalian species, Sarcoptic mange, but I saw it in the wombats and they're just, it's really sad. So they're like, you know, they're all crusted up and they're itchy and they're out during the day cause they're nocturnal animals.

So you wouldn't normally see them out during the day and they've got all crusted over their ears and their eyes. And, you know, there was, I just wanted to help them out in some way. So that's how I got into working on wombats because I saw that there was an immunological response to a parasite.

And so, the wombats actually died from Cycloptic mange. So I'm not aware of any wombats that have managed to recover from Cycloptic mange if they haven't been treated. So yeah, it's really horrible disease. So that's how I got into wombats.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: horrible diseases and some empathy for the suffering animals. Yeah. I guess maybe we can bust on the topic of psychotic mange, however it's [00:17:00] pronounced One question I kind of had was what can you do to help wombats with this? I mean, if it's, you know, in a zoo or whatever, then I'm assuming you can be treated in some form, but especially if it's in the wild, I mean, how do you help the animals?

Yeah, because yeah, it seems like a very difficult thing to do, right. If the animals are quite solitary and in the wild, yeah. I mean, yeah. How do you help those animals?

Julie Old: Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose I've probably been working on this for like about 10 years now. So it's really not an easy one. You know, if somebody has like a dog or, you know, a person has psychoptic mange or scabies in people, it's easily treatable, you know, it's easy to treat. You just can give them an injection or we can go get some treatment and put on the animal.

Just similar to having flea infections on your cat or dog, you can give them a treatment. But because they're wild and as I pointed out before they can have multiple burrows. So they could be in any burrow. At any time. They're nocturnal. They're [00:18:00] big. You can't catch them. Lots of things like that, you know, make it really difficult to treat wombats.

And there are lots of fabulous wildlife carers out there that are treating wombats for Cycloptic mange. And it's an ongoing battle. One of the big problems is, one of the big things that they do is they can treat wombats directly. So you get a pole and scoop, a really long pole. With a little container at the end and they pour it on the wombat if they can get close enough.

So if the wombat's really badly affected they probably have no idea that, you know, a human is nearby. So they, it's able to be treated. Often you have to do multiple treatments. But as I said, you know, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to find that wombat again. So it's a really big problem in that regard as well.

They don't like being brought into captivity. They don't cope well with that at all. They have very high stress levels. So often it kills them as well. [00:19:00] So, the other way that wombats can be treated is having a burrow flap. So that's a flap that is put over the top of the burrow. And when the wombat walks in, it will get treated or when it comes out, it will get treated.

But again, you've got to make sure that you've got the right burrow, you've got the right wombat. And, you know, you're not treating the wrong one. And obviously, wombat burrows are quite big as well, so potentially other animals could be going in there as well. So that's a really hard question about how you treat a, how you treat a wombat.

It's not a, it's not a really easy thing to do. So, but there are people out there trying their very best to do that. As well as that, I should say, you know, in a whole area, you might, have to treat a whole heap of burrows. So all the wombats in the area are treated. However, you can just have one wombat come in that has sarcoptic mange and potentially, you know, reinfects the whole group of them as well.

So it's a, an ongoing battle for many wombat carers.[00:20:00]

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. One thing I was wondering, like what's, what exactly is the problem with, you know, for example, with the flaps treating an animal that isn't infected, especially if you think there is an infected animal likely in that borough, at least occasionally. Because yet don't you kind of have to treat the entire population to some extent?

Or basically what is the problem of treating an animal that isn't acutely infected right now?

Julie Old: Yeah. I suppose, if you put, a dose on an animal that isn't infected. Chances are it won't impact it at all. But again, if a wombat keeps being treated and treated, and particularly if they get low doses, it has the potential for animals to or particularly the mites to be, to build up resistance as well.

So that's a concern with a lot of people. So, there's a lot of, I suppose, controversy about how much product to put in the treatment and how often you treat them. There's no magic bullet at this point on how to, you know, treat wombats in the [00:21:00] field effectively. at the moment, or safely, absolutely 1000 percent safely.

But there are a lot of carers out there doing it, and they do it really well.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And using something like a dart gun or something like that is an option or I was also wondering like, setting up traps, but instead of like trapping the animal, you just uh, care, but I guess that's kind of similar to the flap in a burrow thing, right?

Julie Old: Yeah, so with, again, with trapping wombats, again, they'd be big animals. I haven't trapped wombats myself, but I am aware of some people that have. And bearing in mind that, let's just say politely, wombats have a bit of attitude. And so if there's a trap outside their burrow, they will stay in their burrow.

They can stay in there, no worries for a couple of days, just to be annoying to researchers. And another example of that is, you know, we put infrared cameras on burrows so we can [00:22:00] track the wombats getting treated and do other research looking at, you know, coming and going out of the burrow and depending on where the camera is set up. You have to put it in on a big steel pole, for example. We call them star pickets. I don't know if you have them there, but we call them the big metal posts. They're really hefty. You have to really use a big hammer to put them down really deep. But the wombat will come out and just, you know, get its butt and its bottom and push the post.

So there's a whole heap of videos on YouTube of wombats just, you know, moving their camera back and forth. because they don't want that camera there and, you know, they want it as a scratching post, but it's in their way. They don't like it in their garden, so to speak. So yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, so some of the depictions in the model headed to Wombat were quite correct then. Like when Wombat pushes over the scarecrow and gets really annoyed with it and that kind of stuff. It's

Julie Old: Yeah 

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: not, 

not entirely unrealistic.

Julie Old: They do that. Yeah. Yeah. And they're a lot smarter than people [00:23:00] give them credit for, I think too.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, what is the, basically how's it going with treating this in wombats?

Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? Because I think it's a pretty big problem, right? I think somewhere you said it looks like 30 percent of animals are infected or something like that. Yeah.

Julie Old: it's really variable depending on the area. Some of my research, you know, we've had up to 40 percent of the animals in an area. There is a national park in Tasmania that had nearly all the wombats die completely. So as I said, if there's no successful treatment of the wombat, the wombat will die, unfortunately.

So, it's potentially, unfortunately. Well, it has the potential to allow animals in some areas to become extinct, like populations of them. And the Bear Nose Wombat is regarded as least concern by the IUCN. So they're not at risk at the moment, but potentially small pockets could become extinct from mange.

[00:24:00] So yeah. Sorry, I don't even know if I answered your question.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: uh, Yeah, basically how it's, how it's developing, whether it's getting better or worse.

Julie Old: Yeah, so I would say it's probably a lot more interest and a lot more knowledge is occurring now, particularly lots on, on social media and people sharing stories about wombats being found with sarcoptic mange treating them, those sorts of things. So the message is getting out about wombats and the threats that they have in terms of sarcoptic mange.

So I think awareness is probably increasing in the Australian population, but yeah, I'm not sure that it's improving.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, and I guess awareness by itself also doesn't help. You know, it's just a way to get something else to help, I guess. Okay.

Julie Old: terms of the awareness though, we have a lot more people treating wombats now. So, I suppose. In the past it was very dedicated wildlife carers, but now we have [00:25:00] members of the public treating, treating wombats, being trained and treating wombats as well. So that's a positive outcome, I suppose, but I mean, we have to ensure that those people are doing it correctly and, you know, it's the best for the wombat as well.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. I didn't realize that. I thought it was basically, yeah, just very specialized people who do it. As a full time job or something like that. So we already mentioned earlier that there's, you know, the three species of wombats and that the northern hairy nosed wombat is the was it critically endangered?

Yeah first question, do they have this problem with mange? Because that would be a real problem, right?

Julie Old: Yeah, so luckily, they are the one species that doesn't have a psycho optic mange. So, the southern hairy nosed wombat does, it's near threatened, but it doesn't get it as badly as a bare nosed wombat. The northern hairy nosed wombat, no, doesn't have psycho optic mange in it. Probably one of the reasons for that as well is that because their numbers got very low One of [00:26:00] the big threats to the Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat in the 1990s, early 2000s, was actually wild dogs.

And so to protect that population, because it got down to about, you know, a very small number of individuals, so they put a fence around them. So I put in a proof fence to keep the wild dogs away. So, In Australia, we do have dingoes and wild dogs, and they also carry sarcoptic mange. So it's potential that they could become infected, but they haven't, which is lucky. And so we've had up until quite recently, two populations. We had one at Epping forest, which was the original population that was surrounded by the predator proof fence. And we had a. population of those wombats were translocated to Richard Underwood Nature Reserve. So there's been those two populations for quite some time.

The population at Richard Underwood is [00:27:00] smaller because it's a much smaller site and just this year, just literally like a month ago or so, we had some More individuals from Epping Forest moved to Powrunna. We've had 15, I think, move, being translocated to that third site, which is really good because it'll allow the population to expand even further.

And the last count, oh, the population got down to about 35 individuals initially, with the dog issues. And it is recently been announced that we've got about 400. So that's 400 individuals in the entire world. Okay. So they're more endangered than the giant panda. Everyone knows what that is. Not so many people know what the Northern hairy nosed wombat is.

Such a shame. I'll have to work on that. But yeah, so it's a positive story, but it's got a long way to go. The other thing with Northern hairy nosed wombats we've never been successful housing any in captivity. So there's no captive [00:28:00] populations of Northern hairy nosed wombats. So yeah, they're fully wild, although enclosed populations.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: What does mean no success in having captive animals? Does it mean they just don't reproduce in captivity? Or, because I'm assuming you, you would be able to catch them if you really wanted to. I mean, not you specifically, maybe, but

Julie Old: Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: humanity would be able to capture some.

Julie Old: Yeah. We just don't have the skills to look after them in captivity. I suppose there's a lot of animals that we don't house in captivity because they're difficult to house in captivity and we haven't, I don't think we've done it. I think we've maybe done it once in one zoo and it wasn't very successful.

So as I said before, the, you know, wombats are big animals. They get stressed out easily as well. And Northern hairy nosed wombats are very skittish creatures. So they're very You know, very wary animals. So more so than, you know, the bear nose and the southern hairy nose wombats.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, maybe a little bit more on the northerns. Can you say a little bit [00:29:00] more about kind of like history of like, why they became so critically endangered? Because it seems to me like Yeah, I don't know. It wasn't entirely clear to me, basically, why that population particularly, I think I just, I think Wikipedia, whatever it says, like in the 30s, they thought they were extinct, but then they found some somewhere or something like that.

Yeah, I'm just curious. And I mean, I guess maybe if you want to tie into this also, I guess there used to be more wombat species. I don't know whether it makes sense to talk on this one

Julie Old: Yeah, sure. Sure. So, the northern hairy nose wombat did used to be found across sort of the middle section of New South Wales, up into Queensland. So now I should say that those three sites now are located only in Queensland. So. If we look at that area, it's undergone a very big change in terms of the habitat.

So, Northern hairy nosed wombats live in woodland, so it's quite open. And now I suppose European settlement came in and a lot of the [00:30:00] trees were taken away, you know, to make grazing land for cattle grow crops, those sorts of things. So the habitat has changed dramatically. As well as that, Europeans bought things like foxes and cats that You know, have decimated Australia's.

mammalian fauna in general. So we've had a lot of habitat change. We've had predators come in and change, you know, smaller species have been become extinct. And so it's changed a lot of the ecology of the area as well. So there's a lot of changes that have gone on. And I think that has probably impacted generally the numbers of Northern hairy nosed wombats.

Although we're not really sure how many there were to start off with. And as well as that you know, like I said the wild dogs have been a really big problem. So yeah, I should say Australia had mega fauna previously as well. So we have the largest marsupial is a cousin of the wombats and it's called a diprotodont.

I'm not sure if you've heard about it. It's a pretty cool animal too.[00:31:00]

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I think I've, I have on Wikipedia gone through the like list of extinct vombatiform or whatever it is. Yeah, I mean, it's basically like a wombat in the size of a cow or something, right?

Julie Old: Oh no, no, no. Much bigger than a cow, much bigger than a cow like car size. Huge. Yeah. Yeah. And they had a pouch too. Just great.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: God, that must have been a scary sight. Just one of those things running at you with 50 kilometers per hour.

Julie Old: Yeah. been cool to see.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But one, one kind of general question I had about I guess preserving a species is to what extent does it make sense to like, I mean, I might reveal here that I'm not from molecular biology with my question, but to what extent does like stuff like cloning or saving their DNA or anything like that make sense?

Or is that just Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, maybe what's,

Julie Old: Yeah, for

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: that make any sense at all? Oh,

Julie Old: Yeah, so in Australia we have, as I said before we've unfortunately [00:32:00] had the worst extinction rate for mammals in the world, in Australia. So, it's not something that we're proud of, but that's life. A lot of research is going into conservation of mammals. Particularly marsupials, but all species. And we are doing things like banking DNA. So, reproductive tissues are being banked. And I'm sure this is happening across other species across the world as well. There has been a lot of media interest in the thylacine, which is, of course, an extinct, the extinct Tasmanian tiger. And it was made extinct in, I think, 1937.

It was the last one in captivity. And his name was Benjamin. Um, So there's been a lot of interest in trying to bring back that species because, you know, it's. Yeah. So we've had a lot of interest in cloning and doing a lot of new techniques in a lab in Melbourne have been looking at that sort of stuff, but I have to say there's nothing that we're doing specifically for wombats at the moment.

The Bear Nose [00:33:00] Wombat, it is least concern. The Southern Hairy Nose Wombat is near threatened, but it's relatively safe. And the Northern is increasing in number. So the other thing with that is it's pretty rare to come across. It's a, a fresh dead Northern Hairy nosed Wombat. So to even collect tissues for something, you know, to, to preserve for later is a difficult thing to do.

Where the animals are as well, where the Northern Hairy nosed Wombats are, it's quite isolated. So it can take hours to get there on lots of dirt roads. I myself have not seen a Northern Hairy nosed Wombat myself. So, you know, it's a bucket list thing. Hopefully I'll get to do it one day. But yeah it's not a, not an easy thing to clone an animal, let alone you know, we don't, we just don't know enough about marsupials in general, or even these particularly endangered species. So we know a lot more about sheep and cattle and cats and dogs and things that we know about wildlife.[00:34:00]

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, I mean, I said I don't know much or anything about monochromology. I just assumed once you know how to clone something, you know how to clone most things. But I guess it's more complicated than

Julie Old: Yeah, it's not really my area, but yeah, no, I know that we need to know a lot more about it. And yeah, also you'd have to think about the animals that you'd have to, you know, all sorts of other questions that I can't even think about you know, embryo transfer I know that we can do, you know, In some species of wallabies, for example, the yellow footed rock wallaby, which is a endangered species, we can foster their young into other wallaby species.

I'm not sure if that would work with wombats. We'd have to. Yeah, that'd be a really difficult one.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I find it kinda interesting when you say that the northerns are so far away. I think it's said in Wikipedia that they what's it called? Ebbing forest or whatever it is that's a scientific national park or something like that. Is that a common thing? I've never heard of that.

From what I understand is like this forest where you are only allowed to enter it with [00:35:00] a permit to do research or something like that,

Julie Old: Yeah, so as I said, I've never been there. So the National Park up there, it's a scientific based area. As I said, it's enclosed with that predator proof fence, so it's really restricted access. So it's not something that you would normally go to a National Park and, you know, have a picnic or something like that. It's definitely not that safe.

that type of national park as well. And yes, it's really remote. So you'd have to take, you know, lots of gear to make sure that you could live, like water, your own food, like everything. It's really remote. So it's not an easy place to get to and it's yeah, really restricted. Obviously.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: you're thinking. You're going to make it one day.

Julie Old: I hope one day that I will get there.

Yeah, bucket list stuff. Yep.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: You mentioned as like one of the main, earlier, one of the main threats to wombats being also a roadkill, I guess that's not going to be a problem for the Northerns either. I guess it's kind of weird, they have this they're the most threatened, but they don't suffer from any of the main threats.

Problems that Wombats have in [00:36:00] general. I just saw you I mean, I didn't read it in full, but I skimmed a little bit of it. You had a paper on, was it virtual fences for Wombats? What's a virtual fence and how does, or does it not work for Wombats?

Julie Old: So yeah, so a virtual fence is a fence. Exactly what it sounds like. Okay. It's not quite imaginary, but it's uses sound and lights to deter animals from crossing roads and getting hit by cars. And we did do a study down near the snowy mountains. Which is sort of southern New South Wales. And we looked at, you know, before and after putting the virtual fence in place.

And we found there was maybe a slight decrease in wombats that were the killed by cars, but it really wasn't effective for the money and the time and things like that, that it's, that goes in towards it. And some other people have done much more intensive studies with much larger Larger size fences and obviously, you know, it's [00:37:00] you know, only one habitat as well, you know one fence So if we had more Replicates in more habitat areas would be able to test it more effectively, but we weren't able to do that So I wouldn't recommend using a virtual fence for that.

I know in Europe. I think they use them for deer? deer?

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Would make sense.

Julie Old: Yeah. Yeah. And I think they're quite effective there, maybe.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. But I guess, is it I mean, do animals like wombats sort of, I, I assume that they don't just cross the road because they're kind of curious, but because it's like part of the, you know, because there's a specific reason why they want to go to the other side. So is it that do they still offer know, I think I've seen it here over motorways where they have these like bridges for animals where they have this like big bridge with like grass and trees and stuff, that kind of stuff.

But I guess they don't offer that. So the wombats just.

Julie Old: Yeah, I suppose a lot of roads in Australia are like we have, you know, obviously big highways. We don't have anything probably equivalent to an [00:38:00] autobahn. And we do have speed limits. I'm not sure that everybody sticks to the speed limits. Our speed limits are mostly 100 to 110 kilometers an hour in country areas and on big highways.

That's our max. But,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: not gonna stick to that.

Julie Old: so, and you know, we obviously have a lot of dirt roads as well, and we do a lot of travelling at night, long distances. One of the things that, you know, because Australia has a small population, so I suppose we're limited in our funding as well. So we would be great to have more underpasses and overpasses and these sorts of things, particularly on the big highways.

And I think that's increasing in number, we do have some fences along the sides of roads, for example, to keep kangaroos and wallabies off the road and they're quite effective. But in areas where there's wombats, as I said before, wombats have a bit of attitude. So if somebody puts something in their road, they're just going to take it out.

Okay, so if someone puts a fence in their [00:39:00] road, they will just go straight through it. Okay, so they have no respect in that way. So fences don't work for wombats. Yeah there's other things that people have done as well in terms of other species as well, like putting up poles, so things like sugar gliders and large gliders can jump across the poles one to the other.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: a sugar glider?

Julie Old: Oh, a sugar glider is it's a marsupial it's like a possum and it has skin that they use like a flying squirrel. They're a bit like a flying squirrel, but marsupial. Yeah, so they, but obviously for a wombat, wombats don't, you know, climb up poles and they can't do that either. So that's not effective, but they can use that.

Possums use ropes across their bodies. the highways as well, and koalas. But nothing is really suitable other than overpasses or underpasses for wombats, and they're particularly expensive to build, so it's yes, a problem.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. [00:40:00] So I was just thinking when you mentioned you know, roadkill India in Europe. Recently I was where I grew up and there was this, I was cycling along the road, there was this accident on the side, you know, just like police in a car, whatever. And you saw this animal and it's oh, you know, someone hit a deer.

And then the next day in the news, it said it was a wolf.

Julie Old: Oh,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So I was like, wait, we have wolves where I grew up in the woods. I did not know that. And I don't know whether I wanted to know that. Yeah, I don't know. I still haven't seen one in real life apart from that one. But

Julie Old: Yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, sometimes, I guess sometimes you're like, it's really sad when you see and see an animal, you know, usually it's quite sad when you see an animal killed in accident, but it was like a large predatory animal.

You're like, well, not too,

Julie Old: Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: don't want it running around where I walk, go for a run in the woods or something. 

Julie Old: That's the interesting thing about animals that are killed. I think is like you're saying, you've never seen a wolf in the wild. And a lot of people in Australia, I think haven't seen wombats in the wild, unless they're dead on the [00:41:00] side of the road. So it gives you a bit of an appreciation that, you know, Oh, there really are animals there, you know?

So. Yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I think I've said this before when I had an interview on BATS, because there's a guy who does really cool stuff on spatial navigation in neuroscience and BATS. And yeah, just I feel like once you start looking, like just actually paying more attention to nature around you, I'm surprised at like how much is always going on.

Like where I grew up, I, you That we had bats there, and wolves, and beavers and stuff, like I didn't, I barely knew that until you know started paying a little bit more attention to certain things and then you see like suddenly all these animal species around you. Um.

Julie Old: Really, it's really good. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And I guess beavers are maybe a little bit like wombats in that sense that they don't like to, you know, hang out in the open in the middle of the day where they can be seen.

So you, you see like more the evidence of them rather than the animals themselves. You know, with beavers, it's obviously [00:42:00] the tree trunks with you know, cut, bitten off basically. Um, Actually what are the what are signs that you see a wombat? Is it just a burrow, just a big hole in the ground that's too big for a fox?

Or like, how do you know there's a wombat?

Julie Old: Yeah. Well, foxes

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: the animal itself.

Julie Old: yeah, so foxes actually do go in the burrows of wombats because we have, yeah introduced foxes. And we have other animals go in their burrows as well. But yeah, we know that wombats are there because of the burrows. We also see sort of telltale signs about them going in and out the burrows.

So you can see their footprints, which are, they have really cool feet, very cool feet. So you can see little footprints and one thing that is quite characteristic about wombats is their poo. Am I allowed to use the word poo?

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, whatever you want.

Julie Old: So they have this really cool poo in terms of animal poo and it's a cube shaped poop and they tend to put their poop in really obvious places.

So there [00:43:00] might, for example, be a log. And they will put it on top of the log. Or there'll be like a big grassy type shrub. Not a shrub, but a big grass. And it'll put the poop right on the top. And I often wondered how acrobatic wombats must be because somehow they managed to put their poop up on things that I don't actually know how they could possibly do it, but somehow they managed to and it's quite amazing.

So we know that there is poop because it's quite large and it's quite unique in its cube shape and they put it in really unusual places. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, that, that sounds like an equal price in the making, like the acrobatics that wombats do to place their feet on an elevated positions. I think that's something you should try

Julie Old: you know, it's interesting. I don't think anyone has got video footage of a wombat doing this yet, so that would be quite cool. Yep.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah, I [00:44:00] mean, I do it, but you know, I'm too far away from them, so I guess I'll leave it to you.

Julie Old: Yeah. Yeah. trying.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: mean, uh, Funny that there is like one, I should put it I mean, I guess like when I, especially when I do this podcast, right. And I talk to people who do all sorts of like research and species that I don't do.

You know, even if it's like closer to my own, like decision making or social interactions, that kind of stuff, you know, you have people who do study in mice and rats, you know, in bats, I've had. Someone did something on bumblebees and mantis shrimp and, you know, all sorts of species have been used for all sorts of things, right?

And every time I talk to these people, there's a part of me that thinks Oh, maybe I should one day do like a one year sabbatical where I, you know, do research on something like that and just do something completely different. And see, I've been thinking about ah, wombats, that would be cool.

But It seems to me also that because of some of the stuff you mentioned, that probably be difficult to study for the kind of questions I'm interested in, like decision making and social interactions, because they just not agree to basically do anything you want to do from them. I'm just curious, is that, [00:45:00] is it, are there any studies like that at all in wombats

Julie Old: Not that I'm aware of. I think there's probably some studies on, you know, the shape of their brains and things like that. The skulls. Um, things like that, but I don't, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, there's a few behavioral studies, but there's not, I don't think there's any sort of decision making studies or things like that.

Yeah, I think that'd be pretty, pretty interesting to do though. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean, there's also, I mean, this is actually An interesting question in that, so I remember when I so Nachum Olanowski is the guy who does special navigation in bats and has done some really cool stuff there. And basically, you know, asked him like why he does bat, why he decides to do bat research when most of special navigation is in rodents.

And basically the, one of the main things he said is that the cool thing about bats is that they, number one, are mammals. But they have a complete different way of navigating the world because they have sites and they have the echolocation. So you have a very different way to a very different, for him as a researcher, a different angle [00:46:00] to attack questions that we care about a lot in lots of neuroscience.

 And then I asked him later if you want to, you know, work on an unusual species, like, how do you find a good model? basically model organism to study something. And basically his answer was that, you know, if you want to do, I mean, you know, if you want to study one species, you know, go ahead and do that.

That's one thing. But if you want to also then have a connection to like the big mainstream questions, you have to have a species that had aspects that relate to, you know, the big questions you're interested in. But I just couldn't find anything to be honest. I mean, I don't know whether there's anything I mean, they seem to me to be, like, fairly Yeah, they don't have anything that distinguishes them in that, in a categorical way, almost, where you Yeah, I don't know.

Or is there anything Uh

Julie Old: animal communication and communication, obviously they, they use scent. As a really powerful tool. So they, you know, [00:47:00] their poop up high, you know, obviously we're not sure, but presumably they're putting it there to mark their territory and let everybody know that, you know, they're there.

They're not super noisy animals. So, it's sort of, you know, they might have a bit of a bit like a grunt, you know, so they're not, you know, talking to one another like birds or something, they're not, you know, particularly noisy, but they do a few weird noises. So yeah, in terms of communication, we don't really know that much about how they communicate, so that there's a whole You know whole area there for you.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Ah, great. I'll just move to Australia and I'll spend the rest of my career just trying to get them to make some sort of noise and they just don't want to.

Julie Old: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah study their smells work out what the smells mean. I don't know. Yeah

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, actually, how do they navigate in the borough? I mean, it's, you know, dark, so I guess vision isn't gonna be that useful, I'm assuming. Is it smell and [00:48:00] memory, mainly, or, yeah, how does it work?

Julie Old: okay, so I could tell you something, but I'm maybe I'll keep it secret Working on something at the moment, but I think probably it's to do with whiskers Okay, they've got whiskers, you know, whiskers. So they're using them tactile, you know, feel around. They're not known to have particularly good hearing, but if you're out in the field and you're spotlighting, for example what they'll do is they'll just stop and they'll, it'll look like they're listening, but they're probably actually smelling, you know, because they can, you know, smell from a long distance.

So in the burrow, it's probably, I don't know, it's probably a lot of habit as well. We don't know. We don't know a lot about what they do in their boroughs.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, so that's, yeah, because I was especially curious if you mentioned that, you know, you might have a walmart might have several boroughs that they occasionally go to, but not that often, [00:49:00] and then other walmarts also use them. It seems, I don't know, like, how many changes there would be to the borough over time or whether they're fairly stable, but it seemed to me that yeah, I mean, you can't just rely on the memory of what you dug a few months ago or something.

Julie Old: Yeah, I suppose, because somebody could have moved in and made some adjustments in that time, absolutely. So, you know, when they move dirt, they really move dirt. It's a mammoth job. So yeah, it's a lot of dirt can get moved at any point in time. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I still find it funny. So I recently Read the book, wait, what's it called again? The Secret Life of Wombats.

Julie Old: Oh, yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And so that really focuses on the, especially, well not only, but especially a lot of evolution, which I thought was a lot of interesting evolution in Australia. But uh, also the beginning, it focused a lot on the personal story of What's his name, Peter Nicholson?

And how he as a teenager just Climbed into these, the burrows. Is it [00:50:00] actually, so I think that book's 20 years old or something, I think that, the book I read by this point and I think he said that so basically the story is that like this Peter Nicholson guy if I remember correctly, as a teenager would just sneak out at night and like climb or crawl into these Wombat burrows and wrote quite a lot about like how it worked and that was actually was still one of the best like sources of how wombats actually are like basically what they do is that still the case or is that slightly outdated or

Julie Old: Yeah I actually know PJ, so he's on the Wombat Foundation with me, but I've never spoken to him about that, but I do, I'm obviously aware of, you know, his work that he did in the sixties you know, sneaking out at night from the boarding home and stuff the boarding house. Yeah I've loved that book, The Secret Life of Wombats as well.

 There's no way I would personally be, you know, diving down wombat FRAs. I. Yeah, I just can't even imagine because, you know, there's not just wombats in [00:51:00] wombat burrows. There's snakes and there's spiders and there's all sorts of other things as well. So, I think since then, you know, we've done some more research on that and we understand burrows a bit better and you know, we know that, , they use them to , make sure that they're pretty good in terms of temperature regulation.

So, you know, they might vary between, you know, not super cold and not super hot. So that's one big reason they have the boroughs. So yeah, I think we're learning more about boroughs, but I think we've still got a lot more to go.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: can you use stuff like little robots or something to you know drive through them and take videos or Yeah, basically how, I mean, because that's one of the difficult things, right? Like, how do you study a species that has just, I guess, as a general question has a very different lifestyle to humans?

And even if they're big, are still much smaller. Yeah.

Julie Old: Yeah, so I know there's one researcher in South Australia David Taggett, he did some research with a little like a [00:52:00] remote control car and he had, he drove it in the boroughs and had a look, but I remember he gave a presentation at a conference and he was saying, you know, every so often, you know, because the boroughs are so big and that was in the warrens, so they're, that's in South Australia, so they're in warrens, they're really big and so he would keep getting his cars lost.

Yeah. in there and then you'd have to dig them out. So it wasn't a great story in terms of that stuff, but he did find some pretty cool stuff. We've also and I myself have put infrared cameras on burrows to see, you know, who goes in and who goes out and those sorts of things as well. And yeah, so we're learning more and more about it.

So yeah, we just got so much more to learn. That's all.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. The boroughs and warrens were pretty famous in the wildfires, right? When other animals also use them. Is that actually true? Or is that, well, just a

Julie Old: Yeah, so there is no way that a wombat is going to like wave to another animal and go, Hey, come down my burrow. Yeah, no way. So that's definitely a myth, [00:53:00] but I think, you know, if there's an animal that is in danger. If it's going to die, it's going to go down the burrow, no matter if there's a wombat there or not.

So I think that's the case. So there might be multiple animals sheltering down a burrow at the same time. But I don't think it's the wombat sort of, you know, funneling other animals in there. With the fires that we had in in 19 and 20, in, yeah, a few years ago, it was, you know, absolutely devastating in terms of Australia's east coast.

So yeah, we've had a lot of habitat that was basically destroyed that is, hasn't been burnt for a really long time. And it'll take, you know, a hundred years at least to recover. So it's, it was devastating.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: How did that affect wombats? Because I guess, I mean, I guess they were probably safe in the burrows, but they, as you said, they graze, right?

Julie Old: Yeah. So in, in a lot of the areas where the wombats are, it was completely like completely gone. So right. You know, up to [00:54:00] Huge trees, the tops of the canopies were taken out. All the vegetation around everywhere. So there's no grass, there's no vegetation around for a really long time. long way.

So there was a lot of wildlife carers out in the field providing supplementary food for you know, animals and water as well. The, because the tops of the trees got taken out as well, like koalas and possums and gliders, they were really impacted as well. So yeah, it was a devastating time.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So how's that now? That was five years ago? 

Julie Old: Yeah, so wombats bare nosed wombats, for example, they take about two years to, to raise a young so it will take a long time to recover in some areas because the wombats were taken out. You'd have recruitment coming in from other areas, but again, it's going to take a long time. And if there was no food coming back in those areas for quite some time, the animals will die.

You know, have to have moved on or, you know, and then be put at higher risk from [00:55:00]predators and, you know, roadkill and things like that as well. So it's a, it's not just the one point in time. It's an ongoing issue. So. Yeah, it's it's really hard to say. We don't actually know how many bare nosed wombats there are, so we just don't know.

We can't even work out you know, in a small area how many wombats there are, other than spotlighting, because, you know, we could go around and maybe count the burrows, but we don't know how many burrows go to one wombat and things like that. So it's a really hard thing to work out how many wombats there are.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But I mean, it seems to me that, for the baleenost, also they are at least enough that it's, from what I understand, it's not like a, yeah,

Julie Old: Yeah, they're not at risk of extinction. No.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: If I'm correct, you have a website or a project Womset to do that. So how does that help track or exactly what exactly is the purpose and yeah, how does it achieve it?

Julie Old: Sure, so WOMSAT, it stands for Wombat Survey and Analysis Tool, and it's a citizen science project. So, as I've [00:56:00] said, I study Sarcoptic mange, and one of the things was I wanted to look at over the long term, because Australia's a really big place, I can't go everywhere and study every aspect of it. every area.

So I was looking at getting people on board to submit their sightings of wombats. When they do that, it tells us information about where they are distributed, you know, if they have psychoptic mange, if they don't have psychoptic mange. And then in real time, it can tell us things like, was it the habitat that is the issue?

Is it rainfall that's an issue, what other factors are, you know, impacting psychotic mange in areas, as well as that, because roadkill is such a big issue with wombats, people can submit their sightings of wombats that have been killed by cars to see them on the side of the road. And when We can identify hotspots.

So [00:57:00] in a particular area for lots of wombats being hit by cars, we know that's a hotspot and then we can focus mitigation strategies in that particular area. So, you know, maybe not a virtual fence, but maybe there's some other things that we can do. We can put up more signage, you know, we can put up other things that can help to reduce roadkill, for example.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Signage for the drivers.

Julie Old: not for the wombats. Yes. Yes.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: mean, But like, does, what does that do? Because, I mean, I guess no one wants to hit a wild animal, what's the crossing road? I mean, is it just so that people don't break the speed limit too much? Or what does the sign, how does that help?

Julie Old: Well, if people are aware that there's a wombat in the area particularly if it's a sign that maybe only turns on at night, like it has a light those sorts of things, people are more aware than, you know, if you drive past a sign, people every day, you know, that says whatever the speed limit is, you probably just don't worry about it anymore.

So there's no point in [00:58:00] those sorts of signs, but different mitigation strategies to help reduce roadkill is important. I don't think I really answered your question there. Sorry.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: No, I mean, I guess, the, I guess my question was more like that You know, if you're driving, through a wood area or something like that. I mean in Europe that would be the common thing would you be to have you're driving through a forest or something like that and you know because it's in the middle of nowhere you have a speed limit of 70 to 100 kilometers per hour or something like that.

I mean if you're driving 70 kilometers per hour and a deer just jumps in front of you I mean there's not much you're going to do anyway right so that's kind of what I was getting at with what can a sign really do because it's not like people are going to start driving 20.

Julie Old: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. The, yeah, but it's also about awareness as well. So people, you know, Okay, wombats are out during certain times of day. We need to be driving slowly, being more aware. It's not just wombats, there's kangaroos as well. So kangaroos, eastern gray kangaroos they're, probably the same size [00:59:00] as a European deer and they're big animals as well cause a lot of damage.

There are people that have hit kangaroos and wombats and have died because of the car accidents they've been in. So it's not just a wildlife issue. It's a people issue as well. You know, increases, you know, insurance premiums, all those sorts of things as well. So it's a. It's not just a wildlife issue.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. You already mentioned the Wombat Foundation earlier in passing. Yeah, can you maybe say a little bit more about that? I mean, is it just for preserving the Northern Wombats or is that just kind of the main thing right now, so that's what it's focused on?

Julie Old: Yeah, so the Wombat Foundation was established in 2004. And its founding members are Jackie French, who was a famous Australian author. Um, PJ [01:00:00] Nicholson as well, who the guy we're talking about that goes down the burrows. So, there's a few more members now, but it was established primarily to help the conservation mission.

And increase awareness of the Northern Hairy Nose Wombat. So we work with the Queensland Department to help conserve it. And yeah, it's only focused on the Northern Hairy Nose Wombat. Yep. Obviously people can donate as well. So to help the wombats.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. So how does by the way, Jackie French, I think I have, I think I gave my nephew the book Wombat in the Snow or something like that, or Diary of a Wombat. I can't remember. There's a few, there's a few Wombat children's books out there. I can't remember which one is by Jackie French now, but

Julie Old: Diary of a Wombat, yep.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah.

 I feel like this episode is most useful with, for people with children who want to buy children's books. Um,

Julie Old: Sure.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: or you can read them as an adult. It's, it's, It's legal.

Julie Old: Yes.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, But the, what does a donation do? What is [01:01:00] the mechanism, basically, by which the foundation helps the preservation of Northern Walnut?

Julie Old: Yeah, so the Wombat Foundation helps fund conservation efforts. So, for example, with the recent translocation of wombats from Epping Forest to Poe Runner, we were able to sponsor the crates. that the wombats were moved in. So they're incredible, incredibly expensive items, believe it or not. So, that was one really important thing that we could support.

And another thing that we're hoping to support very soon is some collars. And the collars will be used when the wombats are captured and then released at the po runner site and then we'll be able to track the wombats and make sure that they're going okay and sitting in and settling in nicely.

So that's what they will be useful.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So when you mentioned boxes, I imagined, you know, you're these what's it called? [01:02:00] I can only think of the German word. When you're transporting horses the thing you put behind the car, I imagine those, but like much, much smaller, so it's two wombats side by side being pulled by a car.

Julie Old: Yeah, so they're more like a gigantic dog or cat crate, like really big one. Yeah. And it, you know, it's I think it's something like a 10 hour drive from one site to the other. So it's you've got to catch the wombat in the crate and then transport it. So obviously It's in luxury air conditioned four wheel drive in Onett's drive and, you know, cared for fantastically in those little crates.

So, yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But how did that, how'd that go for the wombats? I mean, you said they're often very timid or get stressed when they're in captivity. Yeah. I mean, because this was a month ago, whatever. How did it go for the wombats? Is there any. Like, how do you, how do you even know that it worked?

Julie Old: Yeah, so I, yeah, I haven't spoken to the people in the department, but I do know that [01:03:00] they translocated 15 and I know that they're all doing well and that's as much as I know. It's a pretty, you know, it's a bit of a top secret, you know, mission really, but yeah, they're going well.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. So top two, top secret missions in Australia are slightly different than other

Julie Old: Yeah. Yeah. It's not quite James Bond or anything, but yeah, no it's

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Moving Wombats is cool

Julie Old: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's very specialized skills that you have to move the wombats with. So yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Special agents in Australia. That's what

Julie Old: Absolutely. They are heroes. They are definitely heroes. The

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I mean, I would know how I would try and. capture a wombat that's probably in the borough most of the time. Actually, how do you do that? Yeah, how do you capture like those 15, for example? I mean, maybe you don't know specifically how they capture those, but like how, if you have, let's say, population that's not that big, right, like the northerns, and you try and capture them, how do you select the right ones to capture and then actually do it?

Julie Old: Yeah, that's a [01:04:00] hard question. So, they do like a census every couple of years and they use it's called a hair trap. And so it's basically like double sided sticky tape and the wombat will go in and out. And so that removes like a little bit of hair. And so they can extract the DNA and look at the genetics of the animal.

And they put lots of cameras out so they know. where the wombats are. They might know that a particular burrow has a particular female wombat in it, for example, that they want to include in the translocation. So that's how they know where the wombats are at the time. And they do that quite intensively.

Obviously, if they're going to do a translocation, they would know that. And then how would you catch the wombat? You use a really big cage trap. So, Yeah, and it's, I think there's a, like a pedal, you know, and it's I suppose it's like a big mouse Trap, but it's all enclosed. Okay. I don't know how to describe that. [01:05:00] Yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Makes sense.

Julie Old: We

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. So,

Julie Old: a cage trap. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: okay. Yeah. But it's not like they, I mean, obviously they're like chase them and jump on them. That was not work, but they obviously was, I was wondering like maybe they, yeah. Again um, knock them on like, uh, with a dark gun knock them unconscious or something like that, but they just, yeah.

Catch them as they are.

Julie Old: for this. No. Yeah. If we were, for example, if there was a research project where we might have to, you know, take a blood sample or something like that, we might have to anesthetize the animal, but I don't think they did in this case.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So I just had a really kind of random parallel. So, so basically, so you're taking, you know, 15 animals out of 400 and taking them, you know, out of the population to start a new one. And you know, presumably you'd want young, healthy, Animals that can [01:06:00]reproduce so they can, you know, start a new colony.

And then it somehow made me think of brain drain, you know, when young people leave a certain area that it's just the older ones are left. And that's often not, I mean, it's an economy. It's not good, but I guess in the same way, I was wondering, basically it's 15 out of 400, just not that big that it makes a huge difference or because obviously you want to keep the old population healthy and growing strong also.

So you can't take out like too many of the younger ones. So how does that basically work to maintain one population while starting a new one?

Julie Old: Yeah, well, I don't know the sexes or the ages of the wombats that were moved and there's probably a good chance that they don't know how old the wombats are, all of them anyway, but they might have moved some juvenile wombats, for example, that are independent. There's a I would suggest that they didn't move any mums that had joeys in the pouch, for example, I think.

Cause that's like a more risky and this [01:07:00] is you know, the first go in a while of doing a translocation. I suppose the other thing is you want to have a bit of a mixed population too. If you've got. I mean, I could be completely wrong, I'm guessing, but I'm thinking it wouldn't really matter what all the ages were, because if you've got some older wombats as well, they're going to be very experienced and they're going to be like, you know, building the burrows and all those things as well.

So there's all those sorts of things. They had to build some pre, like pre burrows, like so that they, when they released them, they had some little burrows to go into as well. So there's a lot of setup that goes into it. It's not you know, Yeah, I suppose if you only have, you know, wombats all the same age, that's going to be a problem too, because you know, they'll all, you know, sort of die off at the same age as well.

So, you know, just through Natural causes. I mean, not the translocation and so I think on the other thing that they're going to do [01:08:00] is they will be translocating more at a later date. So I think that they're going to translate up to about 40 over the next few years. So there's, they're just doing it in stages. You know, this was the first one to see basically how it went. Hopefully it was, you know, and as we know what's going well, so, that will give them more confidence to do two more at a later date as well, so, yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I see there's something very adorable about like imagining adult people digging holes. So the wombats feel at home. Yeah.

Julie Old: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, yeah. , yeah. 

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, that's nice. So at the end of each interview, I ask my guests the same three questions. The first one is what's a book or paper that you think what people should read? Yeah, it can be famous or not famous, old or new but something that you think people should read.

Julie Old: Well, you already stole my idea, but I think The Secret Life of Wombats is definitely a good read, particularly because it's telling a fantastic story. And you have little kids, definitely Diary of a Wombat [01:09:00] is the way to go. And if you want to know more about wombats, you probably want to look at Strahns Mammals of Australia.

It's got some great info in there as well. It's sort of like the Bible, if you like, of Australian animals. Oh, really? Oh, really?

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: put references, like I'll put exactly what that is in the description. Yeah, I mean, the one thing I just found slightly annoying in general with trying to read up on wombats is that it seems like there's not that many books out there. And if I'm correct, the Secret Life of Wombats is actually not even in print any, I think I had to get a second hand copy or something like that, or at least I think it cost me a lot of money to get that book.

Julie Old: today and it was 24, I think. So I thought it was pretty

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Ah, okay. I think I paid 30 or something for that. I mean, it's not like a huge amount of money, but for paperback. Um, But

Julie Old: Maybe, you know, see if you can get it through your local library.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah, maybe so. Or, I mean, I think, yeah, I'm not even sure whether I got it through Amazon. I can't remember. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, I really enjoyed that book too. I don't think I've actually finished it [01:10:00] completely yet. But yeah, there's definitely some, again I really found this story really, I found the story really fascinating with just the evolution of species in Australia.

And I think he mentioned something like Australia is a bad, like, like fossils don't stay very long there or something like that. So like the record isn't as good as it is for other countries but then they had this like one area where they suddenly found like all the fossils and suddenly all of it made sense.

And it was really fascinating. And clearly I should read it again because I can't remember

Julie Old: Yeah, I don't remember that bit actually. Yeah, but yeah, it's been a while since I read it.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. And of course, I mean, the model headed one that I guess would also be,

Julie Old: but you know, don't don't pigeonhole wombats. Like I said, they're actually smarter than we, we give them credit for, I reckon.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: That's true, the model headed wombat is not particularly smart, wombat.

Julie Old: yeah, it's, yeah, it's not really PC. Yep.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Second question is, what's something you wish you'd learned sooner? This can be from your work life, from your private life, I don't really care. Just something you think, [01:11:00] if I'd, you know, if I'd learned that a little bit sooner, maybe it would've helped me out, and then related to that, also maybe like, how did you learn it, or what

Julie Old: Yeah, I don't know. In terms of my work life balance, I probably have to say that, you know, everybody asks me to do things and I probably need to say no a bit more, but it's really hard to do. And I suppose if I said no, I'd, I miss out on opportunities You know, sometimes happen to, so it depends what it is, really.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, it's about the same that you're talking. To someone who mailed you a few weeks ago, whether you can,

Julie Old: Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: whether you want to do

Julie Old: talk in a podcast or not. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah but saying no is is that because you're just very curious or because you don't want to say no to people or,

Julie Old: Probably. I don't want to say no to people, but and you know, I do like to help people too. Probably sometimes , in terms of your job, you need to say no to balance and, you know, other people need to do their job too and things like that. So, you know, [01:12:00] and learn and yeah, things like that.

So. Yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: that.

Julie Old: yes, it's a tough one.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Final question is, I started my postdoc relatively recently. Any advice for kind of late stage PhD students, early postdoc, something like that yeah, just any advice you want to give people like me.

Julie Old: Yeah, and I wish that I'd taken more opportunities to go to conferences and do networking. I think networking is super important. So getting out, meeting people and going to as many conferences as you can because you get new ideas and it's really inspiring and you can make connections to the weirdest things that you never thought you would do and it's yeah, it gives you new and fresh, innovative ideas.

Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay.

Julie Old: Network. And then 

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I've actually.

Julie Old: in the same breath, I would say, you know, if somebody offers you something, say yes, because you know, maybe 50 percent of the [01:13:00] time it never pans out. So my thing about saying no is really important in some cases, but yes, in others.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Is that a bit of a stage you're in your career? Where as a PhD student postdoc, you also get fewer opportunities than if you're already a professor? Or yeah when should I say no more frequently? When should I say no less frequently?

Julie Old: I think you, you have to say, Oh, I think it's really hard to judge. I think it's a really hard thing to do, but I think, like I said, going to conferences and meeting people and networking gives you more opportunities and the more opportunities you have is good. Yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, and then once you have them, but 

Julie Old: yeah. And then, you know, you might actually have to say, well, I can't do. these 5, 000 things. But again it's unlikely that they'll all pan out, but yeah, you know, it means that, you know, it gives you opportunities to meet people that, you know, maybe you get a position in another lab or [01:14:00] something like that as well.

So, and, or somebody says, Oh, I met such and such, you know, they're probably interested in this position and things like that. So I think that's really important.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah, then I think that was it from my side, so thank you very much.

Julie Old: Thank you.