boornewild

Toby chases down a mangey wombat to save her life! Frank the Girlboss didn't make the rescue easy — but eventually she came back to show Toby her new baby ❤️ Keep up with @boornewild!

✨ WILLOW’S GLOW-UP ✨ Willow is a wild #wombat living on Darkinjung Country. 🌤 As the sun sets, she emerges from her underground burrow, and spends her evenings munching on grass. Along the way, she’ll spread native seeds, aerate the soil by digging, and boop the snoots of her wombat neighbours (Wilma included). This is how life as a wombat should be. Simple, and full of grass. 🌱 But it wasn’t always like this. I first met Willow in July of 2022. She had a severe case of mange - an INTRODUCED disease that is FATAL for wombats. 😭 She was losing hair, and was almost deaf and blind from scabs covering her face. She was itching herself to death, and had only a few weeks left to live. That was a long night. I crept through the bush in pitch black - listening for the sound of munching on the wind. My big red net kept getting tangled in vines. I kept almost stepping on bandicoots. These are not ideal conditions for sneaking up on an animal that has sharp teeth. 😬 Eventually, I managed to launch a sneak attack on little Willow, and apply the first of her weekly mange treatments. Watch until the end to see the difference that just a few weeks can make. 💜 Today, Willow is 100% mange free. Her hair, vision, and hearing is back. The glow-up is real. Since recovering from #mange, Willow has resumed her nightly routine, and continues to boop snoots (amongst other things 🤭) with the other wombats in the Hawkesbury. Here’s to the next generation of happy, healthy, mange-free wombats. Yay Willow.

Crumpet is a wild wombat with a deadly disease. He’s one of 35 wombats that I treated for mange last year. And no, it doesn’t just involve a quick netting and a spray of antiseptic. 💜 Treating a #wombat for #mange is tough. You have to pour medicine on their back once a week, for as many weeks as it takes for them to be cured. Anything less, and the parasites under the wombat’s skin will continue to multiply, and practically eat them alive. 🦠 To make sure Crumpet got his weekly dose, I spent hours monitoring him. Using infrared cameras, I pieced together his home range, and the exact underground burrow that he was living in. Then, I either ambushed him (with my big red net), or used burrow flaps to passively apply treatment. 🤯 Over this time, Crumpet became something of an internet legend. Thousands of people voted to give him his silly name - and the entire fiasco ended up on the news in NEW YORK CITY. Meanwhile, Crumpet, ever the introvert, just carried on being Crumpet. He refused to take interviews, resisted the urge to start an OnlyFans, and instead focused on his one true passion. Grass. 🌱 As you can see at the end of this reel, munching on grass while bathing in the sunshine of the Hawkesbury is Crumpet’s happy place. And I think it’s mine too. If you need us - look for a grassy patch about 2 hours north of Sydney. Xoxo wombat guy 🎥 Sony FX6 w/ Sigma Art 24-70 2.8 📍 Dharug and Darkinjung Land 👟 @converse_anz (sponsorship? Jk… 😳 Unless)

Meet Ellie. She likes to pretend to be a rock. 👋 When #wombats have mange, they become blind, deaf, and weak. Ellie is too tired and confused to defend her home range, so she’s been pushed out into a very scary place. 😭 This property has no burrows, no shelter, and a road running right through the middle of it. Because there’s nowhere to hide from hairy men in shorts - her last resort is to pretend to be a rock, and hope that I don’t see her. Without treatment - Ellie will die here. 🩳 Luckily, the landowners reported Ellie to me, detailing the exact time of day and place that they saw her. Not long after, I rocked up with my shortest shorts and green woolies bag to start her treatment for #mange. Then, I caught up with her at least once a week to check her wounds and make sure she was safe. Within a month, Ellie had returned to nocturnal behaviour, and toddled back over to her usual home range - a place filled with cozy underground burrows and luscious native grasses. 🌱 💜 By now, Ellie is totally mange free. Yay Ellie. Overdevelopment makes life very hard for a wombat suffering from an INTRODUCED parasite like mange. More houses mean less safe spaces. I have a dream of making my own wombat reserve one day - a place where my friends can roam without the threats of mange, bulldozers, or humans in general. And rest assured, Ellie will be the first on the guest list 💅 Thank you for helping me make a bright future for my local wombats. 🎥 Sony FX6 w/ Sigma Art 24-70 2.8 📍 Dharug and Darkinjung Land 👜 @woolworths_au (sponsorship? Jk… 😳 Unless)

The wombat SMILED at him! 😭❤️ (🎥: @boornewild)

GOFUNDME LINK IN BIO My name is Toby, but most people know me as “the wombat guy”. I save #wombats from #mange. Mange is a parasite that lives beneath a wombat’s skin, and slowly eats them alive. Without human intervention - it is 100% FATAL for wombats. That’s where I come in. I’ve been treating mange in the Hawkesbury since 2015. Locals simply report sick wombats, and I come over with a big net to give them medicine. I then follow up treatment once a week for as long as it takes for the wombat to be totally mange-free. It’s a lot of work, but there’s nothing more rewarding than watching these zombie wombats regrow their hair, regain their vision and hearing, and go back to being nocturnal. Mange is curable, and I want to help cure every single mangey wombat in my area of the Hawkesbury. But I need your help! Although I’m grateful to have received some funding over the years, 90% of the medicine has been paid for out of my own pocket. It can cost hundreds of dollars to cure a wombat with mange - and in 2021 alone I treated 27 of them. That figure doesn’t include petrol, wildlife cameras, or even the time I spend in the field. And to be clear, I don’t get paid to do this. I volunteer every second of my free time to this because of genuine, relentless passion. If you’re in a position to spare a few bucks, it would go a bloody long way to buy medicine and equipment to help the wombats of Macdonald Valley, Webbs Creek, and Lower Portland. And if you’re not able to donate - that’s fine too! A quick share of this reel would help me a lot. PS. Shorter shorts are on the way! xoxo BoorneWild GOFUNDME ME LINK IN BIO

Say g'day to Frank. She (yes, she) is a real trooper. The crusts you can see all over Frank are from a disease called mange. Without treatment, it is 100% fatal for wombats. A concerned landowner had seen Frank out during the daytime, shuffling about like a zombie. Classic signs of mange. After dubbing this wombat with the fitting title of "Frank", they reported her to WIRES, and I instantly got a ping on my phone. @daniel_farnham12 and I arrived just before dusk with a car packed with all the essentials for a wombat wrangle: ✅ Mange medicine ✅ A big red net (red ones go faster) ✅ Chicken noodle soup (fuel) After a quick catch and release to apply the meds, Frank trotted off into the microlaena grasslands of Yengo NP, and resumed munching. Two weeks later, all of Frank's scabs had fallen off, and she was back to her nocturnal habits. By now, she'll be totally mange free. Yay 💖 The suffering of a #wombat with mange is unimaginable. They are literally being eaten alive by tiny parasites, as they slowly lose their hair, hearing, and vision. Their pizzazz takes a nasty hit too. Yet somewhow, against all these odds, they simply carry on. Taxes and relationship drama pale in comparison to what these little creatures go through every day. When times get tough, wombats like Frank give me strength. I hope they can do the same for you. Let's hear it for Frank the girlboss 💅💅 📍 Darkinjung & Dharug Land 📽 Sony #FX6, 24-105 f4, Cine EI @ 800iso

The goannas of Sydney’s sandstone country are tough as ironbark. This chokehold was the crux of a thirty minute WWE rendition between these two males. This behaviour is characteristic of a dispute over a female... But I couldn’t see any around. (Unless of course, I was the female 😳) 👀 If you look closely, you can see splatters of blood on the scales of the dominant goanna. He was surprisingly ruthless. By the end of the fight, he had dragged his opponent ten metres through the forest BY THE NECK, and sliced its back open like Swiss cheese. If the smaller monitor hadn’t lucked upon a vacant tree hollow, he may not have made it out alive. 🌱 Although confronting to watch, this dance has been going on for thousands of years. Whipping tails and tearing talons have waltzed across the Hawkesbury’s forest floors for generations, etching the sandy soils with stories of triumph and victory. From a human perspective, this behaviour is terrifying. Ted Bundy type beat. For a goanna, however, this is an important part of life. A rite of passage that marks territories, balances social hierarchies, and safeguards the next generation. Sure, it’s terrifying. But it’s part of who they are, and it's part of living in sandstone country. 📍 Filmed on Darug Land 🎥 @sonyaustralia #fx6 24-105mm F4 Cine EI 800 iso, 60fps

@pygmypossumlady is uncovering the secret life of Eastern Pygmy Possums. As urban environments grow, habitat becomes fragmented. Roads, houses, and new developments are spreading, criss-crossing through Sydney's bushland. The impact on our local Pygmy Possums is unknown. Cassie Thompson has dedicated her life to the conservation of this cryptic species. Her network of nestboxes allows her to study the persistence of Pygmy Possums in peri-urban places. Try saying that out loud. Site occupancy modelling, genetic data, and mark-recapture surveys help Cassie understand how these semi-arboreal creatures are impacted by barriers in their landscape. Her PhD research will help find ways to connect the last remaining patches of Pygmy Possum habitat on Sydney's peri-urban fringe. This is a largely overlooked area of study. Pygmy Possums are small, cryptic, and easy to miss when you're busy building a city. As such, this species exists in a blind-spot of sorts, caught somewhere between their former abundance, and the looming threat of localised extinction. Cassie's incredible research looks to shed light on the best ways we can help these little Sydneysiders. Cassie finishes her days covered in mud, leeches, and Possum bites. It's the small price she pays to be the voice for a species, that would otherwise have no voice at all. 📷 Z6ii, 24-70mm f/4 Feat. @pygmypossumlady & @nate.geo_

There were 27 bright purple wombats wandering around the Hawkesbury Region last year. They were not part of a Banksy installation - they were recovering from mange. This magic purple spray sits in my car's cupholder. It keeps flies and infections out of wombat wounds. To recover from mange, a wombat needs to be treated weekly. In 2021, I tracked, caught, and treated these ~27 wombats every single week. It was exhausting. This particular wombat was spotted by a concerned landowner, who granted me access to their property. I can't count how many hours I spent observing this animal - learning it's behaviors, territorial bounds, and unique intricacies. This information is essential. Without it, you'll never find a wombat more than once, and it will succumb to mange. Left untreated, this disease is 100% fatal. After a few months, this bright purple wombat's scarring completely disappeared. It's eyes opened back up, and it returned to nocturnal behaviour. Mange-free. Mange treaters don't get paid. We don't get back the time that we miss with friends and family, while we're out chasing marsupial hobbits. But it's all a worthy sacrifice to help conserve this gorgeous, enigmatic species. To lose wombats, is to lose the heart of the Australian bush. 📷 Z6ii, 24-70mm f/4

2 Roos 1 Duck 😳 Species interactions like this fascinate me. In the heat of Australian summers, waterholes like this are a place for species to set aside their differences and intermingle. Around this same spot I found brown snakes, red bellies, yabbies, goats, and a couple of wombat holes. Typically, these characters are not the best of friends. But when it comes to +40°C days in a changing climate, you don't have much of a choice but to call a truce, and tolerate your annoying neighbours. 📍 Wiradjuri Country 📷 Nikon Z6ii, 200-500mm f5.6

The call of the Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo is hauntingly beautiful. To me, it is the song of Gurara - "long time ago" in Darkinjung. Those who know the sound, know that it is as equally mournful as it is triumphant. It mourns for lost loved ones, who are sealed within our deepest, most nostalgic memories. It mourns for the broken, healing landscape that it reverberates across. On some days, the harmonizing calls from a group of these birds could bring me to tears. Yet, somewhere beneath their apparent pain, lies triumph. A sharp, powerful tone that says "I'm still here." Generations have passed while the Cockatoo's traditional homelands have been irreversibly changed. But like the flash of golden-yellow on their cheeks and tail feathers - they're still here. 📍 Darkinjung Land 📷 Nikon D500, 200-500 f5.6