Tobias Davidson was only seven when, wandering around in the Macdonald Valley bush with his dad during broad daylight, he stumbled upon a wombat with mange.
"It's eyes were almost completely sealed with these awful, bloody scabs. Since then I've been obsessed with trying to save as many wombats from that condition as possible," he told the Gazette from his home in Upper Macdonald.
At 23 years old, Mr Davidson has already dedicated years to finding mangey wombats in his neck of the woods and treating them.
He places medicine-coated flaps at the entrance to their burrows and when they walk in, they get a dose of medicine.
Mr Davidson said mange is treatable and wombats that are treated in this way slowly recover, however without human intervention, wombats with mange inevitably die.
Mr Davidson recently hosted his first workshop with Hawkesbury Landcare, showing Macdonald Valley landholders how to treat wombats on their properties, and he hopes to host many more.
"Mange is a parasite. It gets into the wombat's skin and eats them alive very slowly," he explained.
Scabbing forms over the body, ears and eyes, wombats become itchy and scratch a lot, and wounds and infections develop.
Wombats are considered ecosystem engineers.
- Tobias Davidson
He said mangey wombats could be also be identified because the normally-nocturnal animals were out in the day as they had lost their sight, and they had scabs on their bodies that replaced the hair.
Mr Davidson said mange was common in Bare-nosed wombats - the species that is found around the Hawkesbury, usually north of the Hawkesbury River - which posed a threat to the species.
"Considering how infectious mange is, we need to get on top of the issue before Bare-nosed wombats aren't a common species anymore," he said.
He said while the species wasn't currently threatened with extinction, the threat of localised populations - including the one at Macdonald Valley - going extinct was real due to the combined effects of mange, bushfires and habitat clearing.
"Wombats are considered ecosystem engineers. The wombat digs and builds its burrow, and what it's doing is maintaining and improving soil health, turning over nutrients back into the soil, helping things break down and aerating the soil, and increasing water penetration," Mr Davidson explained.
Wombats' burrows also act as bushfire bunkers for other native species, he said.
Mr Davidson is a volunteer with Conservation Volunteers Australia and the Wombat Protection Society of Australia.
He said 26 locals attended his recent workshop at St Albans where they made 84 burrow flaps to treat local wombats, and tagged wombat burrows in the area with GPS devices so they could collect data on their residents.
"If landholders in the Hawkesbury have wombats and want to get involved in treating them for mange, or accommodating wombats on their property, they can find a wealth of resources at wombatprotection.org.au," said Mr Davidson.
Mr Davidson is happy to be contacted to give advice about wombats, or to assist in the treatment of wombats in the Macdonald Valley area - get in touch with him on instagram @boornewild, email him at boornewild@gmail.com or call 0450 078 677.