Join a bush restoration meet up with the Friends of Bats and Bushcare, helping to ensure Yarra Bend park is a healthy home for Naarm’s flying fox colony.

Whether it’s money or goods (fruit, newspaper, washing detergent), your donations to support the rehabilitation of injured flying foxes, abandoned pups and their environments will make a world of difference for the species and their carers. Wildlife shelters, Bats Rescue Bayside and Fly By Night are great places to start.

If you have the space, plant native food trees in your garden. Flying foxes are pollinators and love blue gums, angophoras, ironbarks, banksias, and more. If you already have fruit in your garden, consider removing the netting and sharing your backyard bounty with the native fauna. If you do chose to use netting over your fruit trees, please be responsible and use netting with a mesh no greater than 5 x 5mm at full stretch (an easy way to test whether the netting is safe for wildlife is to check that you can’t poke your finger through the net).

Watching thousands of bats take flight over the city at night can make it easy to forget that the flying fox is a threatened species. Our ecosystems are reliant on their survival and Naarm is a much better city for their existence. Share what you learned in the Nocturnal Natives workshop with friends to help raise awareness in the community. Continue to stay informed yourself by following people like Gracia and Louise, wildlife carers who share regular updates and tips on how you can best support.