Baby flying foxes starving in numbers volunteers have never seen

Experienced wildlife carers have been overwhelmed by unprecedented rates of flying foxes giving birth to premature pups across New South Wales.

Since late September, wildlife rescue groups in the state have been called to more than 460 reports of malnourished grey-headed flying foxes affected by a suspected starvation event prior to the October birthing season.

Flying foxes born under the healthy weight range have a heightened risk of death.

Volunteer rescue organisation For Australian Wildlife Needing Aid (FAWNA) estimated that about 95 per cent of pups born prematurely will die in care.

Ecologist and wildlife carer on the central coast Kerryn Parry-Jones said she became alarmed after volunteers began encountering hundreds of premature bats, some weighing less than 40 grams.

"People are finding little baby bats on the ground, sometimes with the placenta and umbilical cords still attached," Dr Parry-Jones said.

"I've never seen large numbers of premature babies coming in like this.

"The level of death has been huge."

Concerning rise in early births

Co-ordinator with Wildlife Rescue South Coast (WRSC) Trista Thorpe said volunteers began receiving "abnormal" reports of malnourished bats in late September.

"Those calls just kept increasing and increasing, then we began to get aborted babies in," Ms Thorpe said.

By October, Ms Thorpe said volunteers were responding to dozens of calls per day, recovering dead and sick flying foxes and premature pups at roosting sites and residential properties across the Shoalhaven.

"The smallest one I have weighed was only 38 grams; a newborn [pup] should be born at about 80 or 90 grams," she said.

FAWNA NSW president Meredith Ryan said the trend had been recorded as far north as Kempsey in recent weeks, where volunteers were encountering dozens of deceased pups daily.

Ms Ryan said that while starvation events and mass fatalities were common in flying fox populations, the recent rate of premature births was unprecedented.

"We've never had this massive amount of pup mortality," Ms Ryan said.

"I've been dealing with bats for 30 years, and I haven't seen a season like this."

Recent testing by the Australian Registry of Wildlife Health of flying fox cadavers recovered from the Illawarra has confirmed the animals were "severely emaciated" at time of death.

A spokesperson from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water said the cause of the starvation event and premature births remained a mystery.

"It is believed these cases of emaciated flying foxes could be related to temporary shortfalls in available food, but there's no confirmed cause," the spokesperson said.

Wildlife carers pushed to the brink

The frequency of reports, limited volunteer numbers and long distances between sites has left wildlife rescue groups struggling to confirm the exact number of flying foxes that have died recently.

Due to the high price of the lyssavirus vaccine required to safely handle bats, both FAWNA and WRSC only have approximately 40 volunteers available to respond to callouts.

WRSC volunteers are now caring for 53 flying foxes at their clinic in Nowra while also responding to multiple daily reports of sick bats or deceased bats, sometimes more than an hour away.

Ms Thorpe said she hasn't slept for 48 hours due to the demands of feeding and cleaning required to keep the bats alive.

"Because the babies are coming in so tiny at the moment, they're all on two-hourly feeds, 24 hours a day," she said.

"So we're not getting much sleep in between all of that."

Dr Parry-Jones said while the number of flying foxes who have died at colony sites near the central coast could likely be "in the thousands", the exact numbers can't be confirmed until the immediate crisis is over.

"We won't know until the end of the season just how awful it is."