We Had No Idea How Much We Loved Baby Wombats Until This Very Moment


Last week, I posted an article from deep within a YouTube hole where train-spotters post their latest videos. Today: baby wombats. I saw this clip of an adorable baby wombat approaching a man pop up in my Facebook feed, and boy, is it very, very cute:

There are a ton of baby wombat videos on YouTube. Watch energetic wombats Jojo and DJ frolic after a feed in this video shot at the “Wild About Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center”, in Victoria, Australia.

And, for a more serious take, watch Stephanie Clark and Wayne White, wildlife rehabilitators, talk about the long road to recovery for “Tunna”—orphaned as a baby after his mom was hit by a car—and the intricacies of releasing him back into the wild. Five months later, he’s strong and healthy:

Of course, cars on Australia’s long bush roads, while deadly, aren’t the only threat to wombats. Australia’s wombats are also threatened by climate change, and encroaching development. The Northern Hairy-Nose Wombat, the world’s largest burrowing herbivore, is one of the most endangered species on the planet (there are only about 200 of them), and is therefore especially vulnerable to climate shifts and severe weather. Droughts can also force wildlife like wombats into direct competition with domesticated animals for food. As temperatures rise in Australia, the country’s various species of wombat will experience a shift in their habitats, both in size and altitude.

Now, back to the baby wombats:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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