The University of Tasmania have been studying how Bravecto, a common flee treatment for cats and dogs, interacts with wombats.

Wildlife ecologist and lead researcher Dr Scott Carver said results had shown the new treatment may be able to protect wombats from mange for three months.

He said they worked with a woman in New South Wales who was able to bring sick wombats into captivity and maintain them.

"So we treated several wombats there with a dog weight equivalent of Bravecto and that showed quite dramatic results," Dr Carver said.

"It treated them for their mange disease and they more or less lost all signs of mange within about three weeks."

He said the next step is to test the effectiveness of the treatment in a wild population.

The breakthrough comes as some conversationalist renew claims the disease will cause wombat extinction.

Dr Carver said there is no evidence to support that claim.

"Mange is absolutely a really important animal welfare issue ... but ... it isn't going to cause extinction," he said.

He said the disease has been around at least one century so if it was going to cause extinction it already would have.

"The second line of evidence comes from state wide spotlight surveys ... they show ... over the last 30 years the number of wombats they're observing has gone up," Dr Carver said.

He said UTAS had independently verified the results of those surveys after concerns were raised about their validity.

Sign up to one of our newsletters: