Wombat killings: Fury as Victoria approves deaths of 4321 iconic Aussie animals amid 158 per cent surge

A female wombat lay dead in the Victorian countryside with a gunshot wound to her head.

But inside her pouch, a tiny joey was still alive.

The mother was discovered near Wonyip, in South Gippsland, and her surviving joey taken into the care of local farmer and wildlife rehabilitator Ali Martin.

“Joeys remain with their dead mothers for days, often trying to get back in the pouch,” she said.

It is one of several cases involving shot wombats and their babies that Ms Martin has encountered at Prom Coast Wildlife Care, the volunteer shelter she runs with her husband, Steve, on their 40-hectare property at Foster North.

“They are often brought to wildlife carers by a neighbour who may have heard the shooting the night before and goes to investigate the next morning,” she said.

“We’d have them for up to two years, and that makes it even worse to think that these killing permits are just given out so freely.

“It’s heartbreaking to think they’re just seen as vermin.”

The State’s Conservation Regulator authorised the lethal control of up to 4321 common wombats under 407 permits in 2025 — a 60 per cent increase on the 2692 approved for destruction in 2024.

The number has soared 158 per cent since 2021, when 1675 wombats were authorised for lethal control.

The figures represent the maximum number authorised for lethal control, not confirmed deaths.

The actual number killed is unknown, while the reasons for the sharp increase in authorisations remain unclear.

In March 2025, the Victorian Parliament passed a motion from Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell calling for a review of whether wombats should remain eligible for lethal-control permits, with Labor voting in favour.

“I find these figures pretty galling,” Ms Purcell said.

“To know that they supported my calls for action . . . only to give the stamp of approval to even more permits than ever before, just goes to show that the apparent care for wildlife is only a front.

“They rely on the very many things that happen to native animals across our State remaining secret.”

Ms Purcell said Environment Minister Jaclyn Symes could act without new legislation.

“They could take wombats off the permit list today,” she said. “They just refuse to do so.”

Ms Symes did not respond to questions from The Nightly.

Wombats can damage fences and endanger livestock and farm vehicles with their burrows.

Ms Martin and her husband began farming sheep in South Gippsland in 2018.

“Historically, most people would just default straight to shooting them,” she said.

“Which sounds like it solves the problem in the short term, but not in the long term because they’ll end up just getting another one living in the burrow . . . and then the cycle continues.”

Instead, the couple mark burrows with brightly coloured star pickets, erect rails around larger holes, and use wooden pallets or wombat gates to allow animals through fences without livestock escaping.

“There are other ways to go about it that allow us all to coexist together,” she said.

The Conservation Regulator’s own guidance discourages shooting wombats for boundary fence damage, warning another wombat may simply move in.

Yet lethal-control permits remain available for property damage and safety risks.

“Landowners can apply for authorisation to control wombats where they are damaging property or posing a risk to human health and safety,” a Conservation Regulator spokesperson said.

“Every application is assessed against the requirements of the Wildlife Act 1975, with lethal control a last resort.”

Ms Purcell disputes the scrutiny of applications.

It’s harder to care for a native animal in Victoria than it is to kill one.

Her office tested the scheme and obtained permission to shoot wombats within 24 hours, despite submitting misleading photographic evidence.

“I know for a fact there’s no checks and balances because to prove how easy these permits were to get, my office actually applied for one, and for wombat, we had the permit within 24 hours,” she said.

“We had to just fill in a form. We had to tick a box to say that we tried non-lethal alternatives. They didn’t ask us what ones we had tried.

“They asked us if we had a gun licence, but we didn’t have to prove it, and all we had to do was send a photo of the so-called damage or nuisance the native animal was causing, and we sent a picture of a hole that was clearly not dug by a wombat.

“They didn’t even want to see the animals existed or evidence of the animals on the property, and we had that permit within a day.”

Ms Purcell wants mandatory verification of property damage, proof of non-lethal alternatives, firearm competency checks, and oversight of permitted killings.

“The other big problem that exists is that you have to take out a permit for the number of native species that you want to kill, but there is no requirement to prove that you only killed that amount,” she said.

“So we have no idea if people are taking out permits for 10 wombats but actually killing 50, and neither does the Government or the department because they’re not following this up.”

Ms Purcell also wants wildlife protection responsibilities removed from the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, which oversees both wildlife welfare and lethal-control permits, arguing the two roles are incompatible.

“It’s a fox guarding the henhouse,” she said. “We cannot have the people responsible for the welfare of native animals also the people responsible for the destructive government policies that see them harmed across the State.

“It’s harder to care for a native animal in Victoria than it is to kill one.”

At Waratah Wildlife Shelter, founder Raewyn Jeganathan has spent more than a decade rehabilitating native animals, and currently has nine wombats in care.

“I think that it’s absolutely appalling,” she said. “It is an absolute slap in the face for people like me and all the other shelters and carers out there that work our a...s off with very little to no support from the Government and the like to try and rehabilitate and release these animals.

“The vast majority of these permits are handed out to people that are being inconvenienced by these animals, and I hate to think what an inconvenience we cause them.”

Ms Jeganathan said landowners who had already obtained permits sometimes approached her for help.

“I’ve seen their applications, and most of the time, it’s just ‘the wombat’s living under my house, and I don’t like it’,” she said. “Ultimately, I think we forget that we’re living in their habitat and we share it with them.

“Wombats don’t understand property boundaries.”

Ms Jeganathan wants wildlife-proofing measures incorporated into planning and building requirements for new homes in rural areas, to prevent wombats sheltering beneath houses.

Despite the sharp rise in authorised killing, there is no clear evidence Victoria’s wombat population has increased at a comparable rate.

Ms Purcell believes the Government is relying on inadequate population estimates and wants a comprehensive Statewide count.

“We actually think the population numbers of these animals have gone down,” she said.

A major scientific review published in the Annual Review of Animal Biosciences in 2024 cited an estimated 432,000 common wombats in Victoria.

Separate research estimated about 915,000 wombats across Tasmania and its islands.

Scientists have been unable to establish whether wombat populations are increasing or declining in Victoria, while research in Tasmania has estimated population growth over recent decades.

The researchers identified other pressures on the species including habitat fragmentation, road deaths, and sarcoptic mange.

Back at Prom Coast Wildlife Care, Ms Martin is also caring for Ruby, a wombat joey rescued from the Toora North area in March last year after its mother was shot.

Ruby required milk feeds every four hours for months. Now living in a large pre-release enclosure, where she has dug her own burrow, she is being prepared for release around Christmas, almost two years after her rescue.

“A lot of people will say, ‘Oh, there’s hordes of wombats,’ but is there?” Ms Martin said.

“They only produce one joey every 18 months to two years, so they’re not prolific breeders.

“Where are we going to be in 20 years with our iconic Australian animals? That’s the thing that we worry about.”