ADVOCATE FOR THE FLYING FOXES
Use the template below, drafted by Mappa guide and President of the Friends of Bats and Bushcare, Davita Coronel, to submit a request to the New South Wales government to follow in Victoria’s footsteps and ban garden netting that is unsafe for wildlife. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals regulations are under review and open for public submissions until December 19, 2024. You are welcome to use the following as is or modify to make it your own. Complete your submission by emailing your feedback to pocta.reg@dpird.nsw.gov.au.
Dear staff of the NSW Department of Primary Industry and Regional Development, involved in the Review of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Regulation 2025,
I write this submission because I am concerned about the grey-headed flying-foxes (Pteropus Poliocephalus), and I want to suggest an action you can implement to help them. I suggest that you implement a ban on the sale and use of unsafe netting, or wildlife unfriendly netting. Unsafe netting has an aperture of more than 5x5mm when fully outstretched. This netting is often used on backyard fruit trees to prevent animals such as flying-foxes, possums and birds feeding on the fruit. Implementing this ban will alleviate two issues:
1. Severe animal cruelty. The proposed ban is important to prevent harm to many species of wildlife, including species listed as vulnerable to extinction in NSW such as the grey-headed flying-fox.
2. High burden on the community of volunteer wildlife carers and rescuers in NSW. The ban will provide significant relief on the volunteer wildlife rescuers and carers community, who are frequently called out to rescue entangled wildlife such as flying-foxes.
Severe animal cruelty. Unsafe fruit tree netting is a leading anthropogenic cause of flying-fox entanglement in urban areas. The injuries of netting entanglements include burns, fractures, ripped wing membranes and exposed bones. Flying-foxes can self-mutilate and bite through bones or wings in order to get free (Coronel, 2024: 127). Members of the public may be inclined to release the flying-foxes themselves, which can lead to worse outcomes for the flying-foxes (Coronel, 2024: 127) or for public health risks when humans handle a bat.
These netting entanglements occur often. Anthropogenic causes, including netting entanglements, constitute more than half of the flying-fox rescues in NSW (Mo et al, 2020). This pattern is similar in Victoria, where the majority of flying-fox admissions to wildlife hospitals had anthropogenic causes (Scheelings and Frith, 2015). In NSW, there were 1633 netting or barbed wire entanglements between 2011 and 2017 for all flying-fox species (Mo et al., 2020). As the authors report, these numbers are highly likely to be an underestimation, as members of the public do not always call a wildlife rescuer. For reference, there were at least 935 flying-fox netting entanglements between 2010-2020 in Melbourne, Victoria, that is highly likely to be an underestimate as well (Coronel, 2024). When a flying-fox is taken into care by a volunteer wildlife carer, euthanasia or death is a likely outcome due to severity of the injuries. One study reported a mortality rate of 59.3% of the total admissions of flying-foxes to wildlife hospitals (Scheelings and Frith, 2015).
Burden on the carers' community. Volunteer wildlife rescuers and carers are overburdened with the response to netting entanglements of flying-foxes. Volunteer rescuers often perform dangerous physical labour to retrieve entangled flying-foxes in trees (Coronel, 2024: 129) and they can encounter hostility from members of the public when responding to flying-fox rescues (Coronel, 2024). These physical risks and emotional impacts come on top of the care work required to rehabilitate wildlife. The volunteer work hours are significant: a work week of wildlife rescuers can on average be 31.6 hours, and financial expenses are on average $5300 annually (Englefield et al., 2019).
The proposed ban on unsafe netting is an easy intervention to address the above concerns. There are already numerous wildlife friendly netting alternatives available to members of the public. Including this ban will ensure consistency across NSW policy frameworks, as it significantly affects a species listed as vulnerable to extinction in NSW. Several states have preceded NSW in the inclusion of this ban: Victoria (September 2021) and ACT (September 2023). Including this ban in the NSW POCTA 2025 will continue the positive trend for the Australian native wildlife, and particularly grey-headed flying-foxes.
Thank you for considering my submission. I hope to see my suggestions reflected in the POCTA 2025.
Best wishes,
[INSERT NAME]
[INSERT DATE]
References
Coronel, D. (2024). Learning to Live with Flying-foxes. [Doctoral dissertation, Deakin University]. DRO. https://dro.deakin.edu.au/articles/thesis/Learning_to_Live_with_Flyingfoxes_an_Argument_for_Feminist_and_Indigenous_Ethics_of_Care/27410823/1
Englefield, B., Candy, S., Starling, M., & McGreevy, P. (2019). The Demography and Practice of Australians Caring for Native Wildlife and the Psychological, Physical and Financial Effects of Rescue, Rehabilitation and Release of Wildlife on the Welfare of Carers. Animals, 9(12), Article 12.
https://doi.org/10.3390/ani9121127
Mo, M., Roache, M., Haering, R., & Kwok, A. (2020). Using wildlife carer records to identify patterns in flying-fox rescues: A case study in New South Wales, Australia. Pacific Conservation Biology, 27: 61-69.
https://doi.org/10.1071/PC20031
Scheelings, T. F., & Frith, S. E. (2015). Anthropogenic Factors Are the Major Cause of Hospital Admission of a Threatened Species, the Grey-Headed Flying Fox (Pteropus poliocephalus), in Victoria, Australia. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0133638. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133638