MP’s plea: leave your fruit trees for wildlife

ANIMAL Justice Party MP for Western Victoria, Andy Meddick, is calling on people living in Geelong and surrounding areas to share their fruit with wildlife this summer.

Mr Meddick and volunteers will distribute flyers into mailboxes in Geelong and other areas of Western Victoria over the rest of summer about the urgency to help fruit-eating native wildlife.

With bushfires burning more than 1 million hectares of native food sources, flying foxes and birds have been forced to search for food in suburban backyards.

As a result, there has been an increase in emergency calls for wildlife becoming trapped in deadly fruit free nets.

New laws are set to come into force next year to ban the sale of fruit tree netting that catches vulnerable and hungry wildlife, but Mr Meddick is encouraging Western Victoria to get ahead of the change and help our native wildlife before it is too late.

“This is an urgent call out to Geelong and all of Western Victoria to remove fruit tree netting and share it with our vulnerable wildlife who are hungry and displaced as a result of bushfires,” he said.

“Flying foxes are our forest pollinators and we’re going to need them to help regenerate the forests that have been lost,” he said.

“But thousands are dying needlessly in fruit tree nets.”

Mr Meddick said more than a billion native animals had already been killed by bushfires.

But Bev McArthur, Liberal MP for Western Victoria, derided Mr Meddick’s plea to home gardeners.

“Our fresh fruit and vegetable suppliers will need every assistance if they are to produce the 100 per cent plantbased diet Mr Meddick and his friends advocate,” she said.

“Is he not also keen to support the ability of individual households to become self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables?”