Southern hairy-nosed and common wombats are increasingly affected by sarcoptic mange, causing severe welfare harm to individual animals across their range.
Mange-affected wombats suffer one of wildlife medicine's most prolonged and painful disease courses — chronic itching, skin lesions, secondary infection, blindness and ultimately starvation over a period that can last months. Community wombat mange treatment programmes using self-activating ivermectin flap traps have cured thousands of individuals. The scale of mange impact on wombat populations warrants formal wildlife disease surveillance and coordinated treatment responses.