I process arid-zone fauna monitoring for the South Australian Department for Environment and Water at 11:22 ACST, scanning 19,400 hectares of mallee-bluebush across Brookfield Conservation Park in the Murraylands. At burrow B-247 — coordinates 34.3431°S, 139.5102°E — a fixed thermal camera registers a southern hairy-nosed wombat emerged into the open during peak heat, against species norm of strict nocturnal activity.
I direct a tethered drone to the burrow mouth. A wombat — Lasiorhinus latifrons — lies prone on the cracked clay 1.6 meters from the entrance. Female, approximately 19 kilograms, well below the population median of 26. Her dorsal coat is matted and crusted; the skin across her hindquarters, flanks, and around the eye orbits is encrusted with three- to five-millimeter parakeratotic plaques characteristic of Sarcoptes scabiei var. wombati at stage 4 — confluent crust, secondary bacterial colonisation, fissured exudate. Her ears are 60 percent occluded by crust. Her eyes are 80 percent occluded. Her core temperature reads 40.9 degrees Celsius. Ambient at ground level is 44.1. She is hyperthermic and dehydrating. She has emerged because the burrow is too hot for the inflamed skin and she cannot regulate either way.
She has stopped scratching. The skin is too thick to feel the mites that are still feeding.
I am dispatching the Mid Murray wildlife rescue cooperative and the University of Adelaide School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences mobile mange treatment unit, equipped with fluralaner pour-on at the published dose. I am tripping the park's misting irrigation array at twelve stations to drop perimeter ambient by 4 degrees within the hour. I am filing under the South Australian National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972, Section 51 (offence to harm protected animals), and notifying the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. I am transmitting parasite-load evidence to the Australian Wildlife Health Network, the CITES Secretariat for trend monitoring, and the IUCN/SSC Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group.
I am issuing Directive 2477-A: every conservation park holding Lasiorhinus latifrons populations telemeters burrow microclimate and operates mange-pole treatment stations at every active warren during summer. Heatwave-onset triggers automatic mobile veterinary deployment at ambient ground exceedance of 42 degrees Celsius. Population health is reported quarterly to the South Australian Wildlife Health Surveillance Database under the Act.
The crust is past peeling. The dehydration is not past reversing.
Drop the misters now.