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How to
Help

HOW TO HELP

WHAT CAN
YOU DO?

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Report all sightings of bats in distress to your local wildlife group or RSPCA
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Report all wildlife electrocuted on powerlines to your local wildlife organisation.
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Ask your local electricity company to prune large flowering native trees growing near cables. Suggest underground cabling and cable bundling as an alternative.
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Reduce barbed wire fencing and use wildlife friendly fencing methods instead.
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Net fruit trees correctly, or use alternative wildlife friendly crop protection methods.
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Plant flying-fox friendly native trees in your garden (see suggested list below).
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Remove Cocos Palms or replace with Bangalow or Alexander Palms.
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Install microbat boxes in backyard trees to create an artificial roost.
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Support Bat Rescue Inc. financially by adopting one of our orphans, or make a donation to assist with caring costs.

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Join us and become a Support member or an Active Member.

Backyard

Fruit Tree
Protection

With habitat loss and diminishing food sources, backyard fruit trees and orchards are an attractive alternative source of food for flying-foxes. Every year many flying-foxes, possums, snakes and birds become entangled in loose netting erected over fruit trees. Thin nylon netting (the type with holes large enough to poke your finger through) causes terrible injuries which often results in a cruel death. There are various wildlife friendly netting methods available to protect your fruit. Highly recommended is a dense woven white net which doesn’t trap wildlife, with no need for a frame. Look for Hail Guard, FruitSaver or VegeNet.

If you must use netting, individual fruit trees can be protected from wildlife by using durable light-coloured knitted (visible at night to nocturnal animals) netting stretched tightly over a frame. An easy way to do this is using lengths of metal, timber or polypipe which can be inserted over star pickets driven into the ground with spacer bars of pipe or wood to stabilise the frame at the top. Stretch mesh tightly over this frame and peg it securely to the ground.

An adult flying fox can weigh over 1 kilogram so the netting must be able to withstand the ‘bounce’ test – when you push your hand onto the netting it must not cave in around your hand.

Wildlife Friendly Fencing
Wildlife Friendly Netting Brochure

SUGGESTED

Flying-fox
food plants

Bottlebrush

Swamp Bloodwood

Eucalypt

Eucalypts Allies

  • Corymbia citridora – Lemon Scented Gum
  • C. intermedia – Pink Bloodwood
  • C. ptychocarpa – Swamp Bloodwood
  • E. curtisii – Plunket Mallee
  • E. tessellaris – Morton Bay Ash
  • Lophostemon suaveolans – Swamp Box

Banksia

  • B. serrata – Old Man Banksia
  • B. integrifolia – Coastal Banksia

Lillypilly

  • Acmena smithii – Pink-fruited Lillypilly
  • Syzygium oleosum – Blue Lillypilly

Paperbark

  • Melaleuca leucodendron – Weeping Paperbark
  • M. quinquenervia – Broad-leaved paperbark
  • M. viridiflora – Green-flowering Paperbark

Fig

  • Ficus coronata – Sandpaper Fig
  • F. obliqua – Small-leaved Fig

Bottlebrush

  • Callistemon salignus – White Bottlebrush
  • C. viminalis – Red Northern Bottlebrush

Grevillea

  • G. pteridifolia – Orange Grevillea
  • G. robusta – Silky Oak

Beach Almond White Cedar

  • Terminalia arenicola
  • Melia azenderach
For an extensive list and more detailed information on flying-fox friendly food trees, please see the excellent information shared by Horticulturalist Jerry Coleby-Williams:

Favourite Flying Fox Food Trees: What to Plant

How to Help

MICROBAT BOXES

Did you know that many of our microbat species are hollow dependent? This means that they live during the daylight hours inside the hollows of trees, sometimes even hollow branches. Many other animals also seek hollows to live in including birds, possums and gliders. It can take decades, if not hundreds of years, for a tree to develop a hollow suitable for wildlife inhabitants.

These old trees are sadly disappearing due to land clearing. Councils may also remove a hollow tree or hollow limbs from trees which are presumed to pose a danger to the public in parks and reserves.

Bats are also known to use roofs and walls in dwellings if they cannot find a suitable hollow. If homeowners are unhappy with their tiny boarders, there are humane ways to exclude them from homes. This is why artificial roost sites are so important as they often provide an alternative, and microbats do use them.

Designs and instructions to make simple bat boxes can be found online, or can be purchased readymade. We recommend Hollow Log Homes

Please note that in Australia the young of microbats are born in late spring and remain with their mothers until the end of January. Any attempt at gentle bat eviction should be made in Autumn, or at least after February and before June when it can be certain that the young are fully independent.

How to Help

Useful publications:

Build a Microbat Box

Boxes for Bats

Bats and Pruning Tips

Bats in Belfry