A project has been launched aimed at educating the public on the dos and don'ts of living with or near native animals.

Healthy Wildlife Healthy Lives is the brainchild of Associate Professor Alan Lymbery and Emeritus Professor Andy Thompson from Murdoch University.

They came up with the idea while working with wildlife rescue centres across Perth.

"As the population of Perth expands we start to encroach on wildlife habitat," Dr Lymbery told ABC Radio Perth.

"We were seeing aspects of people's interactions with wildlife that seemed to predispose them to diseases."

At the heart of the project, which is being piloted in Perth's eastern region, is a website advising the public on how to avoid causing unintentional harm to native animals.

Case study of the quenda

One key piece of advice is to not feed wildlife at any time, and people should also avoid leaving pet food out.

A male quenda on Perth's Melville Golf Course. ( Supplied: Brett Glossop )

Quendas, small bandicoots often mistaken for rats, do not tend to thrive in urban environments.

"They eat a lot of natural food," Dr Lymbery said.

"But they will also get into pet food if people leave it out and that can cause problems."

Dr Lymbery suggested people living on the urban fringes plant low-lying dense vegetation in their backyards to provide quendas with shelter and boost their natural food sources.

"With quendas what we have found is that when we compare these little animals between urban and bushland habitats, the ones in the urban habitat weigh a lot more," Dr Lymbery said.

"They are tending towards obesity.

"That causes its own health problems; we have certainly found that they are a lot less fertile in urban areas.

"No-one wants to see a fat quenda, especially the quendas themselves."

Skip the rat poison and snail pellets

The website also advises against using rat poison or snail pellets in your backyard.

"Poison is an issue, both deliberately and accidentally," Dr Lymbery said.

"If you are trying to encourage wildlife into your backyard you really don't want rat poison or even snail pellets, they can pick up those and they will really cause some major problems."

Alan Lymbery urges people to consider native fish before throwing anything in the water, even a pet goldfish. ( 720 ABC Perth: Emma Wynne )

Don't flush your goldfish

Dr Lymbery has a particular interest in the ongoing welfare of native fish.

Through his research he has found that human behaviour is adversely impacting on native fish stocks in local river systems, in particular through the introduction of non-native parasites to the water.

"We're particularly concerned about a thing called anchor worm. It's not actually a worm, it's a crustacean and it gets into the skin and the gills and we find it a lot more frequently on native fish," he said.

"It's a goldfish parasite.

"It undoubtedly originally came in with goldfish and people either deliberately or accidentally releasing goldfish into waterways."

In addition to the website, the Healthy Wildlife Healthy Lives team is holding workshops and sending out hundreds of information packs to vets, community groups, local councils and wildlife rehabilitation centres.

They hope to eventually extend the program to the whole of metropolitan Perth.

"People love interacting with wildlife," Dr Lymbery said.

"That's one of the reasons we build houses around bushland, because we want to be part of the natural environment.

"It's just got to be done in the right way."