Bleaks days could be ahead for Canberra's wombat population, as ACT animal welfare experts say housing developments are pushing wombats out of their homes and onto roads.
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Sleepy Burrows Wombat Sanctuary owner Donna Stepan said she had received an increasing number of injured wombats from NSW, the ACT and even as far away as Victoria over the past 15 months.
Ms Stepan, whose sanctuary is based outside Gundaroo, said 60 per cent of wombats admitted had to be put down because of their injuries.
"A very typical case we get called out to is where wombats are hit by a car, they're not checked, people just drive on [and] they're on the side of the road with broken backs," she said.
She said in the past 11 years the small sanctuary had seen at least 600 animals come through its doors, a figure she blamed on developments encroaching on their habitats.
"People want to go and build their house on a bush block, all well and fine, [but] what it means is they've put extra roads in which have divided a very old wombat territory. There's now a road wombats have to cross, which they've [previously] crossed for 20 to 30 years over the rest of their lives," she said.
RSPCA ACT animal care manager Simon Yates said the number of injured wombats coming through their doors had been slowly increasing over time.
"We're seeing them being hit by cars, particularly mums ... they're on the roads more often," he said.
"Because of the way developments are working they're starting to end up in pockets, islands of native bushland that are left. So to find sufficient food supplies and mating they have to travel across roads."
Ms Stepan said the wombats in her care only reproduced every two to three years and even then the joeys only had a survival rate of 50 per cent.
She said education was the key to saving the ACT's wombats and was going into schools across the territory to get the message across.
"If we keep going at this rate, I see a very bleak future. We have discussions about if we get in 12 orphans a year to raise, realistically where are these animals going to go to be released," Ms Stepan said.
"We get one in from the ACT by the time it's ready to be released a suburb goes in where it was found."
