Animal
Photos - Index
361. Baby Bats Rescued in Australia 360.
Men Save Whale
from Netting
Torrential
rain has brought chaos to Australia , and not just to the humans who live
there.
Australian
Bat Clinic and Wildlife Trauma Centre director Trish Wimberley and her
carers have helped save 130 orphaned bats on the Gold Coast in past weeks.
They saved
350 young bats during the 2008 storm season but this year think there's more
going on than just wild weather.
Baby bats at the Bat Clinic in Advancetown, which has helped at least 130 baby bats after the wet weather
Worker Wendy Wimberley lovingly tends to baby bats at the Bat Clinic, where
patient numbers are up this year
Carers have
visited several bat 'camps' on the coast in recent weeks to find
four-week-old babies on the ground covered in maggots and fly eggs.
Trish said:
'They're coming down to feed on the ground. That makes them vulnerable. It's
not a natural occurrence and shows there is trouble in the environment.
'Bats are a
barometer to what is going on in the environment. They're our canaries down
the coal mine'.
The
surviving youngsters will be bottle fed and kept either hanging on clothes
lines or in special intensive care units until they are ready to fly again
in about four weeks.
The winged mammals are bottle fed, wrapped up and hung on clotheslines until
they are well enough to be released
Meanwhile
on Friday residents of northeast Australia returned to homes caked in sludge
and nervously watched the skies for more rain while waiting for swollen
rivers to recede.
The worst
appeared to have passed from flooding that covered an area the size of
France and Germany in murky brown water for longer than a week, but torrents
still posed dangers in partly-submerged towns in Queensland state and
progress on assessing damage and rebuilding was slow.
On Friday,
police banned boats from the swollen river coursing through the city of
Rockhampton that is expected to remain near its peak for another 10 days.
The scope
of the damage is not yet known, and fully repairing all of the
infrastructure washed away or ruined could take years, the army general
heading recovery efforts said.
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