Build SA's 1st Free-Tailed Bat Flight Cage

With thanks to all of you and LUSH Charity Pots our Free-tailed bat fligth cage is almost complete!! 

Work constructing South Africa's biggest bat rehabilitation flight cage began at the end of April! As with any build, once you start, plans that worked on paper do not always work out on the ground. A few slight changes had to be made along the way and one included increasing the size of the central block that is used to create the race track style to the cage to ensure the bats fly in a circular motion around the cage, rather than just cutting across one side to the other. The clever team at the ReWild have turned this problem into a bonus! This exclusion zone is actually now big enough to be useful, and turned into an additional flight cage for the centre to use for other species of bats. So now they will have additional flying space in a new flight cage, within a flight cage!

We are so excited to be a part of this project, it seriously is a game changer for our little free-tailed bats as well as all free-tailed bats across the country, and the fact that it will be ready before the end of the winter means that the team can start flight preparing the bats for release in spring.

Becky is a little free-tailed bat that is currently undergoing treatment and care at ReWild. She was hand raised at another facility for a couple of weeks before she joined ReWild and so the team were surprised by how thin she was when she arrived. After a few days at ReWild Becky had still gained very little weight, so obviously the team was concerned, she definitely had some issues that were stunting her growth.

The centre has received a lot less bat pups this year which indicates that there have been problems in the wild population. In addition the centre has received a higher number of bat pups with health issues including birth defects and these are more often seen when the mother bats have been exposed to toxins. Becky was another indicator that the bats are having a very tough year.

After treating Becky for possible parasites and adding some additional supplements to her diet, she started showing some improvement. She is still behind in her development for her age but she is catching up and she’s strong and full of enthusiasm. Despite her challenging start to life, Becky is full of beans and just one of the cutest little bats. As we are now in our winter months, Becky will over-winter with the team and with our flight cage due to be ready in time, she will be able to be flight prepped and released in the spring. This will give her plenty of time to catch up on growth and development.