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Something has been digging up lawns in the Sydney suburb of Manly. People's cratered front yards look like a miniature war has happened over night.

They damage is actually due to the 'snout pokes' of long-nosed bandicoots, who use their noses to seek out invertebrates and fungus living just below the soil surface.

They love lawn. Absolutely adore it in fact, according to Dr Catharine Price, a research associate with the University of Sydney.

‘A golf course with a bit of bushy area between fairways would be absolutely perfect,’ she says.

Watered grass often has a mixed population of invertebrates below it for the bandicoots to hunt. They also love the areas around open-bottomed worm farms and compost heaps .

North Head is actually one of the pieces of land which forms the entry to Sydney Harbour—on one side of the ridge is harbour and on the other is surf beach. Out at the pointy end is a patch of national park and bush, then houses and apartments with grass, trees and lots of roads.

There is a population of bandicoots in the bush and a population that lives in the urban area. This trapping session is part of a long running study which aims to understand what crossover there is, if any, between the two groups and how their respective behaviours should influence management plans.

This might include traffic modifications, which might ameliorate a major threat to the population.

According to Dr Price, in two recently-completed weeks of trapping , the team found two bandicoots which had been killed by cars.

‘One of them was an individual that we had captured and micro-chipped just the week before,’ says Price.

Between 30 and 40 long-nosed bandicoots call the urban area home, and threats include traffic incidents, dogs, cats and foxes.

Residents can help by keeping lawn instead of concreting and allowing passage by having soft foundations to fences (bandicoots scurry between backyards to forage and hide).

Dr Price’s research has also found that bandicoots prefer native mulch to pine bark, as the former seems to promote better biota under the soil.

‘Keep your lawn watered, have a compost bin, have a worm farm, have some low dense bushes around the edges of grassy areas, keep your cats indoors, don’t have a dog—they’re probably the main things.’