When an Australian nurse working at a hospital with outdated incubators happened upon a kangaroo rescue center, she realized she could help save lives.
Once used to help save premature human babies, the incubators are now mimicking the conditions of a mother kangaroo’s pouch, where her joey will live for the first 8 months of its life.
Dozens of orphaned joeys and pinkies, or marsupial pups who haven’t opened their eyes yet, are brought into Kununurra Kangaroo Rescue Haven in East Kimberly, Australia, every year.
Because they are the largest terrestrial animal in Australia, an adult kangaroo rarely has to worry about predators and their populations can balloon quite dramatically. This, unfortunately, renders them much like whitetail deer in the US—at extreme risk of becoming roadkill.
Mandy Watson, director of the Kununurra Haven, has saved hundreds of orphaned joeys from their moms who have been hunted or struck by vehicles. Young, pinky joeys can struggle to survive without the warmth and humidity of their mother’s pouch.
She has seen hundreds of orphans return to the wild, but thousands not make it to adulthood.
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“In 20 years, we’ve released 823 back into the wild. It’s really hard, especially in the dry season, for us to keep up that constant temperature,” Watson told ABC News Down Under. “The humidicrib (incubator) is going to be a constant temperature that’s going to dramatically help [to] save a few more lives.”
The humidicribs were donated by nurse Jane Darlington, a clinical pediatric nurse at the Kununurra District Hospital. The hospital needed to get rid of them as the rapid march of medical technology had seen them become obsolete.
Darlington got the idea while shopping in town. She saw a volunteer from the rescue center helping to raise awareness of their work by walking around in a wallaby costume, holding one of their orphaned joeys.
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“It was very cute and caught my attention,” Darlington remembered. “I’m very pleased we’ve been able to give [the incubator] to somebody [who will] use it.”
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