15/10/2025
He's not just hanging out there, he's trapped.
Over the last two weeks, 200+ little red bats have been rescued from barbed wire fences in windy and foggy weather, and about half of them have had to be euthanised. The others are being looked after by wildlife carers. They were caught on barbed wire fences in the Tumoulin, Gillies Highway, East Palmerston and Mareeba areas.
“Some of the fences are on ridgelines. The bats were trying to keep low, and out of the wind but they smashed into fences. Tumoulin near Ravenshoe is a real hotspot.” - Jenny from Tolga Bat Hospital.
These bats were roosting through the day in the Tolga Scrub.
Swapping the top strand of barbed wire fences to plain wire saves lives - for bats and other native animals like owls and gliders. Find out more here: www.terrain.org.au/wildlife-friendly-fencing and www.wildlifefriendlyfencing.org
Jenny again: “Tolga Bat Hospital has been running a wildlife-friendly fencing project since 2006. It's impossible to do nothing when you witness the suffering and loss of life from barbed wire fences in hotspot areas.”
About little red bats:
🦇The smallest flying fox in Far North Queensland.
🦇They mainly eat blossom and nectar from native trees.
🦇They can travel 20 to 30km a night in search of food.
🦇They are important pollinators of native tree species.
The top wire of fences cause 86 per cent of wildlife entrapments.
Kudos to all the amazing wildlife carers out there. Some are now working on attaching strips of white tape to the fences so that bats have a better chance of seeing them.
(Terrain NRM raises awareness in this area as part of its Forest Resilience project, funded by the Australian Government’s Saving Native Species program. The Tolga Scrub and Tumoulin are Mabi Forest and Wet sclerophyll forest, which are some of the most threatened ecological communities in the Wet Tropics region.)
Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water
