By Fiona Bassett | Project manager
What a bat season this has been!
Following the bushfires which wiped out critical food habitat and led to a mass abandonment of pups due to starving mothers; then the mass mortalities from extreme heat, and then torrential rain and flooding with trees collapsing and power lines down, bats getting entangled in fruit netting - it has been really, really busy with bat rescues.
We opened Kukundi crèche for our flying-fox pups early January 2020. Every week we have been doing a general health check of all the pups in the crèche. They are weighed and their forearm is measured. We also look over each pup, check the condition of their wing membrane and joints and general behaviour. As each weeks passes, we watch them progress through the dehumanising process, until they reach the stage (usually after about 5 weeks in crèche) where they are ready to move into our releases cage which is located in the bush not far from a flying fox camp. It is from here we eventually open the hatch of the cage so that they can be free and join the local camp.
Since January, we have been able to release over 90 pups back into the wild, with another 40 ready to go next weekend. It has been such a busy season with more than normal numbers of pups coming into care. More pups’ means more fruit required. We have had wonderful support from one of our major supermarkets (Woolworths) donating many weeks of fruit (over 220 kgs of apple and pears each week) for our flying foxes in care. We have had a local primary school that was learning about the environment, collect fruit and donate to us also. We have had other donations of bat wraps; syringes and other bat care items from many different people and groups, which we are truly grateful for.
One exciting development down at Kukundi, our release facility at Lane Cove National Park, was getting the cool room up and running for this season. This has meant we have been able to store fruit and minimise loss due to spoilage – something that we really needed this season with so many mouths to feed.
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.
Cheers
Fiona Bassett
Project Manager
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