The northern hairy-nosed wombat is one of the most endangered creatures in the world, ranked as critically endangered. In the 1980s, the estimated number of surviving wombats was as low as 35 before a breeding and protection program gradually increased the population. Still, wombats are slow breeders (each fertile female will have no more than 1 baby wombat, known as a joey, every 2-3 years) and by 2003, there was still only estimated to be 113 wombats, including 30 fertile females. All these wombats were in a single location: Epping Forest National Park in northern Queensland, Australia. This concentration made the wombat vulnerable to being made extinct in a single stroke if a natural disaster hit the park, and one only needs to remember the gigantic floods which covered Queensland in January this year for a reminder of how easily that could occur.
