Nearly 3000 people have thrown their support behind a petition to stop wombat culling in Tasmania.
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The online push has come from “frustrated” Wombat Warriors volunteers who say the government is allowing healthy wombats to be shot while hundreds are dying from mange.
“Volunteers are fighting to save wombats afflicted with this insidious disease with effective treatments but it is soul destroying that healthy wombats are being shot unnecessarily while we try to save the species,” the petition reads.
“These beautiful creatures have such a slow breeding cycle that to issue licences to cull them places them in grave danger of being completely wiped out.”
Having only launched the petition on Saturday, the organisation has already been inundated with support from across Tasmania and Australia.
One supporter wrote “this is disgusting, native animals and yet they are going to allow people to kill them. Barbaric!”
Another said “I am signing because I don't want wombats to become extinct”, while another said “there is no single economic reason possible for placing our sensitive eco-system at risk. Every animal, plant and insect is important to a local bio-diversity and the impact that unnatural removal of a species places on it has is devastating effect”.
Wombat Warriors founder John Harris said it was time to make the issue of wombat health in the state a political one and is pushing for the reduction of culling permits in areas known for mange.
“We are culling healthy wombats while desperately trying to save sick ones,” Mr Harris said.
“It’s frustrating and it’s sad … we are all angry and traumatised from watching hundreds of wombats die. This is the biggest case of animal cruelty in Tasmania’s history.
“People said nobody would treat this issue seriously unless you have a petition – so that’s what we did.”
The petition has been directed at Environment, Parks and Heritage Minister Matthew Groom and Deputy Premier Jeremy Rockliff.
A state government spokesman said the department had “significantly tightened access to crop protection permits since the wombat mange infestation, from an average of about 34 each calendar year since 2010 to just four so far in 2017”.
