RESCUERS WING IT NORTH TO SAVE FLYING FOX PUPS
QUICK, to the batmobile!
Three members of the Gold Coast-based Australian Bat Clinic have made a 3500km round-trip mercy dash to Cairns so that their Advancetown group can help save the lives of at least 90 critically endangered baby bats.
The group rescued the baby spectacled flying foxes after construction work in the main street of Cairns meant mother flying foxes were under stress and began “dropping’’ their babies.
Gold Coast volunteers took turns driving, feeding and cleaning the spider-fingered babies in their specially built van. The tiny mammals brought to the Gold Coast were suffering pneumonia.
Director Trish Wimberley said the Cairns bat clinic had been inundated with orphaned bats – 900 in total – and called for help from the Advancetown organisation.
“The rescue group didn’t have the people to look after them,” she said.
“We were trying to send help up (but it wasn’t feasible), so we went up to Cairns and picked up 90-odd babies and drove back down again.”
Ms Wimberley said she hoped to be able to return the orphaned bats in a healthy condition to the Cairns group by the end of this month.
They would make the return journey the same way they had been brought down – in the “bat van’’.
Flying the bats down to the Gold Coast had been ruled out as an option because of the risk of a higher mortality rate compared to bringing them down by road.
Ms Wimberley said fortunately fewer local bats had required rescue help in recent times, allowing the Gold Coast group to assist the north Queensland operation.
“We haven’t got as many through. Last time we had 300,” she said. “This year we have 100 (of our own).
“But we’re on standby. We’re going to get hit. We’re
waiting for the heatwave to come through.
“We lose thousands when temperatures hit 40C.”
Ms Wimberley said looking after the babies was no easy feat, with the flying foxes ranging in age from four weeks to two months.
“I just burn through washing machines every year,” she said. “Four-hourly feeds, 100 babies, clean wraps every four hours ... that’s 600 wraps every day.”
Ms Wimberley said although many people thought bats were pests, they were the “night shift” workers of the native bushland, acting as pollinators.
“They do the night shift,” she said. “Eucalypts open their peak pollen receptors (flowers) only at night.”
She said bats would pollinate for hundreds of kilometres, whereas the “day shift’’ bees only pollinated over a distance of about three kilometres during daylight hours.