Flying foxes and fruit bats are experiencing mass mortality events during extreme heat events in Australia, creating acute welfare crises that challenge wildlife rehabilitation capacity.
Heat stress mortality in flying foxes creates some of the most visually distressing wildlife welfare emergencies in Australia. During extreme heat events, bats fall from trees in large numbers, suffering severe dehydration, neurological damage, and fatal hyperthermia. Rescue of individual animals provides welfare benefits but cannot address events at population scale. The welfare response therefore requires both robust rehabilitation infrastructure for affected individuals and climate action addressing the root cause of increasing extreme heat events. Wildlife carers who provide emergency care during heat events play a critical welfare role, and training networks that expand carer capacity before event seasons are essential. Urban greening and water provisioning in bat habitat areas also provide thermal refugia that reduce mortality risk.