Grey-headed flying foxes, listed as vulnerable under federal environment laws, usually feed on the blossoms and nectar of native trees. According to the NSW environment department, the bats now face food shortages across the state, from the northern rivers to the south coast. Rescue organisations in Victoria are also seeing more callouts, particularly in East Gippsland and Castlemaine.
Wires said the mass starvation event was likely the result of habitat loss and a dry winter, with poor seasonal flowering of eucalypts and other native species. Some animals were displaying unusual behaviour: eating fruit off the ground, drinking water from grass after rain and hanging too low in trees. Many malnourished and dehydrated females are in the final month of pregnancy and losing their young, the organisation said.
Rachael Smethurst, bat coordinator at Fawna wildlife rescue on the NSW mid-north coast, said the group was receiving 50 to 90 calls each day, more than the total number of bat callouts in the previous nine months. "They're coming into back yards to eat ornamental fruit trees and eating a lot of ripe and unripe cocos palms," she said. "They're crawling around on the ground eating unripe dropped fruit, and quite literally dropping out of trees due to starvation." Many bats were already dead, including pups that had been born prematurely.
Dr Vere Nicolson, a Wires wildlife vet, said caring for premature pups was "labour intensive and not universally successful", and the number of animals involved made the response more challenging. Tamsyn Hogarth, director of the Fly By Night Bat Clinic in Victoria, said rescuers were seeing many "exhausted and emaciated" bats and starving babies "like little skeletons", which appeared to be coming from NSW.