Thousands of baby flying foxes abandoned by mothers in Australian wildfires

Thousands of baby flying foxes have been abandoned by their mothers amid Australia‘s devastating wildfires, conservationists have said.

A harsh drought and bush blazes sweeping the country have disrupted the mother bats’ ability to produce milk to feed their offspring.

“We have lost about 90 in the last three weeks,” said Hugh Pitty, an ecologist who monitors a breeding colony in the east-coast town of Bega. “We just find them on the ground underneath the trees in the park.”

Grey-headed flying foxes are among the world’s largest bats, with wingspans up to 1m. They are a threatened species.

In Bateman’s Bay, north of Bega, monitors counted 100 deaths with a further 1,900 logged in the nearby Shoalhaven region, Mr Pitty added.

“As an event, it’s widely spread. It’s not good news for flying foxes,” he said.

The bats are night-time pollinators crucial to the well-being of the forest, said Janine Davies, who works at a Shoalhaven bat clinic and sanctuary.

The fall in their numbers would affect “all the other animals that are dependent on the trees they pollinate” including parrots, possums and koalas, she said.

Koalas have been hard-hit by Australia’s wildfires, which have wiped out about half the population in one New South Wales coastal reserve.

The flames have engulfed some 2.5 million acres of farms and bush, killing four people since November and incinerating more than 400 homes.

There are fears that dozens of blazes near Sydney, which have blanketed the city in smoke, may take weeks to extinguish without the help of heavy rain.

Wildfires are common in Australia during the summer, which begins in December, but this year the fires started much earlier, blamed on soaring temperatures, arson and dry winds.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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