Flying foxes are ecologically vital fruit bats providing essential pollination and seed dispersal, but face mass culling due to perceived crop damage and relentless persecution.
Flying foxes suffer from multiple welfare harms. Heat stress events during extreme temperatures cause mass mortality where colonies of thousands die from hyperthermia, with pups separating from mothers and orphaned joeys requiring intensive rehabilitation. Human disturbance of roost camps causes panic, maternal separation, and juvenile deaths. Shooting during culling programs, sometimes permitted on orchards, causes wounding if shot placement is poor. Electric fences around orchards cause burning and electrocution deaths. Net entanglement around fruit trees causes captured animals to slowly starve or die from injuries. Flying foxes have complex social behaviors, long maternal bonds, and individual personalities documented by carers. Their ecosystem services including pollination of native eucalyptus and Banksia are irreplaceable.