Call to sign wombat privacy pledge and show some selfie respect
They are gentle, cuddly and impossibly cute. So it is perhaps no surprise that wombats are in demand from tourists keen to pose with them for a selfie.
Those in pursuit with their cameras, however, have been told to back off.
Visitors to Maria Island off the east coast of Tasmania have been asked to swear an oath not to disturb the large population of wombats for the purpose of joining the #wombatselfie fad on social media.
The oath says: ‘‘Wombats, when you trundle past me I pledge I will not chase you with my selfie stick or get too close to your babies. I will not surround you or try to pick you up. I will make sure I don’t leave rubbish or food from my morning tea. I pledge to let you stay wild. Part of the Maria Island oath
‘‘I take this pledge to respect and protect the furred and feathered residents of Maria. I will remember you are wild and pledge to keep you this way.’’
About 30,000 visitors make the 15km trip to Maria Island from Tasmania each year. The mountainous countryside is home to rare marsupials including forester kangaroos, bennett’s wallabies, pademelons and tasmanian devils, but the wombats are the major draw.
Their popularity as selfie stars has come to rival that of the quokkas of Rottnest Island in Western Australia.
Wildlife rangers are worried about the impact of them becoming an unlikely social media trend. ‘‘We’re asking people to respect the fact that they’re wild animals and respect them for what they are,’’ John Fitzgerald, the head of Tourism Tasmania, said.
‘‘There was no particular incident that occurred; it’s just seeing an increased activity and people wanting to have photos of animals and get up close to them.’’
The pledge has also been translated into Chinese. Ruth Dowty, chief executive of East Coast Tourism in Tasmania, said that visitors had to remember that wombats were living in the wild. ‘‘They pretty much ignore people but people run up to them and they don’t run away,’’ she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ‘‘People get very excited about wombats.’’
Wombats are the world’s largest burrowing animal and can grow up to 30kg.
The marsupial can defend itself with claws often used to dig through earth. Attacks on humans, however, are very rare.
Maria Island, which in the first half of the 19th century was a English convict settlement, is not the only tourist destination to ask visitors to take an oath.
In 2017 Iceland introduced a tourist pledge asking visitors to respect nature and last year New Zealand introduced the ‘‘Tiaki Promise’’ in which tourists agree to ‘‘tread lightly’’ and ‘‘travel with an open mind’’.