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The Queensland Government provided the $250,000 for the project and the Commonwealth dispatched a Green Corps team to build it. The scientist in charge of the project, senior conservation officer with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service Dr Alan Horsup, estimated that, including the labour, the total cost will be about $400,000.
"We will be enclosing a totally wild population," Dr Horsup said. A dogger has been employed to shoot any wild dogs inside the national park, and poison baits will also be set.
Experiments are under way to try to drought-proof the Epping Forest population by introducing specially designed "wombat water troughs" and supplementary foods. So far the wombats have shown no interest in either.
"My dream," Dr Horsup said, "would be to be able to throw hay bales off the back of the truck as I drive down the Hairy-nosed Highway. Then we could keep them breeding all year."
The main idea behind the new structure is that it will buy some time for the species while more permanent solutions are worked out. Dr Horsup and his team are trying to identify other areas in Australia where northerns could one day be moved. Once the species inhabited a band of semi-arid, inland Australia that stretched from central Queensland down to Deniliquin near the Victorian border.
Dr Horsup says the total population of northerns would need to be around 150 before any new sites could be established.
Dr Horsup defended the cost of the efforts.
"I just feel we have a responsibility to save this species," he said. "There's only been one other megafaunal extinctionin Australia in the last 200 years and that's the Tasmanian tiger."
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|Fence to protect wombats|
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