{"id":629737,"date":"2026-10-13T22:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T22:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/629737\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T22:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T22:28:11","slug":"flying-foxes-in-nsw-and-victoria-face-mass-starvation-amid-food-shortages-wildlife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/629737\/","title":{"rendered":"Flying foxes in NSW and Victoria face mass starvation amid food shortages | Wildlife"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flying foxes are starving en masse across New South Wales<\/a> and parts of Victoria, with wildlife rescuers responding to a surge in reports of \u201cexhausted and emaciated\u201d adults and skeletal pups.<\/p>\n

Most reports involved grey-headed flying foxes, listed as vulnerable under federal environment laws and which usually feed on the blossoms and nectar of native trees.<\/p>\n

They are now facing food shortages across NSW, from the northern rivers to the south coast, according to the state\u2019s environment department. Rescue organisations in Victoria<\/a> are also experiencing an uptick in callouts, particularly in East Gippsland and Castlemaine.<\/p>\n

Rachael Smethurst, the bat coordinator at Fawna wildlife rescue on the NSW mid-north coast, said the organisation was receiving 50 to 90 calls each day \u2013 more than the total number of callouts for bats in the previous nine months.<\/p>\n

The bats were starving, she said. \u201cThey\u2019re coming into back yards to eat ornamental fruit trees and eating a lot of ripe and unripe cocos palms. They\u2019re crawling around on the ground eating unripe dropped fruit, and quite literally dropping out of trees due to starvation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flying foxes were staying in back yards because they lacked the energy to fly back to camp, she said. Many were already dead, including pups that had been born prematurely.<\/p>\n

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Wildlife rescue organisation 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 natives.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany malnourished and dehydrated female flying foxes are in the final month of their gestational period and are tragically losing their young. They just haven\u2019t got the nutritional health or strength to produce milk or carry to full term,\u201d the organisation said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some animals were displaying unusual behaviour as they struggled to find food and water. \u201cThey\u2019re eating off the ground, drinking water from the grass after the rain, and hanging too low in trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wires wildlife vet Dr Vere Nicolson said caring for premature pups was \u201clabour intensive and not universally successful\u201d, with the response made more challenging due to the number of animals involved.<\/p>\n

Tamsyn Hogarth, director of the Fly By Night Bat Clinic, said rescuers in Victoria were seeing many \u201cexhausted and emaciated\u201d bats and starving babies \u201clike little skeletons\u201d, which appeared to be coming from NSW.<\/p>\n

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Bats spending time in people\u2019s back yards during the day was a red flag, she said. \u201cThey\u2019re so hungry they\u2019re actually eating during the day, away from the safety of the camp,\u201d she said. There were a lot of dead pups under trees, and incidents with barbed wire, dog attacks and electrocution had also increased.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know for sure what is causing this particular incident, but food shortages can be aggravated by climatic events such as drought and El Ni\u00f1o<\/a> conditions,\u201d a NSW environment department spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s health department reminded the community to avoid touching or handling bats, after 43 people were assessed having been scratched or bitten in the past two weeks.<\/p>\n

People were encouraged to report sick or dead bats to their local wildlife rescue, Hogarth said. That enabled volunteers to check for pups, rehabilitate animals where possible, and help ease the suffering of others \u2013 although access to veterinarians able to provide euthanasia was challenging, with so many reports coming from regional or rural areas.<\/p>\n

Hogarth said grey-headed flying foxes usually gave birth to one young per year, so the loss of so many pups would have a \u201cterrible ripple effect\u201d for the species. The food shortages followed thousands of heat deaths<\/a> this summer, and came amid disruptions to Melbourne\u2019s Yarra Bend camp from freeway construction works. \u201cThey\u2019re copping it everywhere, they can\u2019t catch a break.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flying foxes are starving en masse across New South Wales and parts of Victoria, with wildlife rescuers responding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-629737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}