Help Baby Bats Take Flight!

Dear Supporters

It has been a torrid season so far with an overwhelming number of bushfires devastating the Australian native forests and bushland.  Bushfires in NSW have now burnt in excess of 3 million hectares – forests that provided food for flying-foxes. The bats are now abandoning their young, leaving local camps littered with dead and dying young. This is likely an aftermath of extreme stress and starvation due to loss of food, and disrupted migration patterns from smoke and fire storms. 

In addition, this last week we have experienced a record-breaking heatwave, which has lead to catastrophic loss of life in many flying-fox camps throughout Australia. Flying-foxes are responsible for long distance pollination and seed dispersal of native east coast hardwoods and native fruits. Every one is precious. WE NEED THEM. THEY NEED US. To read more see the link below.

Over the last few weeks we have had some visitors at our release facility, Kukundi, at Lane Cove National Park. 16 educations bats from Australia Walkabout Wildlife Park have been evacuated to our facility due to the huge fire that was burning at Mt Gosper and threatening their home. They have finally been able to go home in the last few days as the fire is no longer threatening their home.

On a more personal note, I have 8 pups in care this season. One special little man, who we named Bean, came in mid November with his umbilical cord and placenta still attached.  He was found on the ground and was tiny – not on our growth charts for weight and forearm. He had no belly or face fur; his eyes were shut and ears down – a premmie pup. 

I have had the privilege of raising him, and so far so good. He is now 28 days old (adjusted age). He had major issues sucking from a teat without snorting the milk out his nose, so for the last 6 weeks I have been syringe feeding him 6 to 7 times a day. It is only this week where he has been able to feed from a bottle and teat without this happening.  Yeah! I have to admit that it has been very stressful at times, not knowing if he was going to survive, but very rewarding seeing him each day put on weight and forearm length.

Thank you so much for all your generous donations that enable us to continue to rescue, rehabilitate and release back into the wild our beautiful flying foxes. We couldn’t do it without your help. 

Fiona

Links:

• Mass Baby Deaths ABC Report

We have had a busy and long winter season, caring for about 300+ adults and juveniles that have managed to get themselves into trouble. We have released out last group with only 5 bats still hanging around and we are support feeding them.

Hopefully these last stragglers will leave soon and then we can begin the maintenance work around the facility, in preparation for the pup season that will start in around 6 weeks. We need to give the cages a thorough clean, repaint the cage floor surfaces and generally tidy up the surrounding area.

One exciting new addition to the facility that we hope to get done will be a concrete pathway. During the height of pup season we can be cutting between 50 and 80kgs of fruit daily to feed the little cherubs in care. This is between 350 - 560kgs of fruit every week - converting this for you -770 to 1235lbs! This is a huge amount of fruit we have to move from the cutting room to the aviaries, which currently we carry up to the cages in large buckets- hard on the backs of our volunteers. A concrete pathway from the cutting room to the cages will allow us to use a trolley to take the fruit right up to the cage door.

We have a just completed our yearly training course, which saw a number of Sydney Wildlife bat carers doing their mandatory refresher course and 5 new flying fox carers (hooray!), just in time for pup season.

Thank you so much for all your generous donations that enable us to continue to rescue, rehabilitate and release back into the wild our beautiful bats. We could not do it without your help.