A team of Queensland scientists is performing-ground breaking research on the southern hairy-nosed wombat in a bid to become the first in the world to perform artificial insemination (AI) on the species.

University of Queensland associate professor Stephen Johnston said the team had developed a non-invasive method to accurately monitor hormones in the marsupials.

He said figuring out when the females were on heat was the key to being able to perform AI.

"We're able to map her cycle and we know that she's ovulating," Dr Johnston said.

"What we're still struggling with is trying to identify when they're coming into oestrus, and for us, that's one of the things that we would love to do, is to apply what we've done in the koala, and that is to do artificial insemination."

The researcher hopes the team will be at that stage within the next year, a crucial step in being able to assist the critically-endangered northern hairy-nosed wombat.

The study is being carried out at Australian Animal Care and Education at Mount Larcom in central Queensland, where project coordinator Tina Janssen has established the Safe Haven shelter for a variety of wildlife.

Dr Johnston said their current study was looking at the effects of stress hormones in the southern hairy-nosed wombat, with blood tests performed on six animals — three females and three males.

But they have also been testing the wombats' urine to measure luteinizing hormone and oestrogen, which researchers hope will help to identify when the animals are sexually receptive.

Safe Haven is home to a wide range of animals, including the southern hairy-nosed wombat.

Dr Johnston said handling wombats was challenging because adults weighed 30 to 40 kilograms, which is why staff at Safe Haven had trained the wombats from a young age to urinate on demand.

"Rather than having to hold an animal, you give them a little rub on their bottom and that produces a urine sample," he said.

"In that urine sample is all these goodies which tell you what's going on physiologically, so whatever hormone you're particularly interested in."

Dr Johnston said AI had been successful in the closely related koala, with more than 30 pregnancies.

"The problem there has been freezing the sperm. Identifying the girls to be on heat is really easy," he said.

"In this animal it's actually been the opposite. We have the sperm stuff sorted but we can't get the female sorted because it's hard to find when she's on heat."

Dr Johnston said the facilities at Safe Haven gave researchers access to animals like nowhere else in the world because of the vast number of animals kept there.

"The exciting part of it will be that no-one has ever produced a baby by means of artificial insemination in wombats, and never in marsupials with frozen sperm, and that will be an absolute heart stopper if we could do it," he said.

Assisted breeding crucial in drought

Ms Janssen said while it was still early in the breeding season, staff at the shelter were hopeful a birth had occurred there in the past few days.

She said they would not know for sure until they reviewed video footage, because baby wombats were smaller than a jelly bean when they were born and made their way to the pouch.

A southern hairy-nosed wombat warms itself in the sun at Safe Haven in central Queensland.

"The natural breeding is happening, but obviously the assisted reproduction is really important because last year we didn't have the rain and we didn't have a breeding season, so the effects of climate on this species is big," Ms Janssen said.

"There may be a time where we actually have to intervene to produce babies, so that's the importance of doing all these hormone trials."

She said if the wombat Amy had not given birth, they still had time in the season to put her back with a male.

Ms Janssen said they were expecting a good season.

"If we get two or three babies that would be excellent, but we have to watch now that we don't get too many babies, because then we have to house them," she said.