Baby echidna dies after burrow is dug up during road work
An animal rescuer has shared “heartbreaking” images after finding a motionless baby echidna, believed to have been injured and killed by a road grader.
Yolandi Vermaak, who founded an initiative called Wombat Rescue, had been with two volunteers at a reserve in Googong in NSW, on Wednesday when they made the discovery.
Ms Vermaak said usually when they see echidnas they stop “because they’re so adorable”, but while there was no blood near the little animal, they quickly realised something was wrong.
“I do know that the puggles are not supposed to be out (of the burrow) when they’re that little,” Ms Vermaak told Yahoo7.
“You could feel the little spikes but they were so tiny you couldn’t see them.”
Ms Vermaak believes the little animal may have been hit by a grader earlier that day and left with head injuries.
“The road was graded just hours ago so it must have dug up mum echidna and her puggle’s burrow next to the side of the road,” the animal lover wrote online.
Sadly, they tried to revive the puggle but it was was already dead.
Its mother, who seemed uninjured, had stayed by her baby’s side.
“That was what literally broke my heart,” Ms Vermaak said.
“It happened earlier. He was cold already. She never left she just stayed there,”
According to the Australian Museum website a young echidna suckles for a couple of months in its mother’s pouch and when it becomes too prickly she removes it and builds a burrow for it.
It then continues to suckle for a further six months.
Despite being sad about the puggle, Ms Vermaak does not believe the man operating the grader would have known there was a burrow, as she said he was sitting very high and needs to grade the whole road.
“As much as I want to be angry, the guy who did the grading could not have known they were there. Still makes me very sad,” Yolandi Vermaak wrote online.
“I don’t blame him at all. It’s unfortunate that it happened,” she added.
