often greatly exaggerated. When Ratcliffe submitted his report, he noted the number of paid bounties was 300,000, and this would not have included the mortally wounded escapees or those left suspended at roosts by the grip that is held by their weight. This species continued to be killed or wounded by shotguns, many remaining disabled where they fell after the bounty was stopped, despite the advice of Ratcliffe and later researchers on an ineffective and uneconomical practice and the needless extermination of the population. Orchardists have begun shifting to the use of netting that also discourages the daytime visits of birds. The impact of indiscriminate shooting of bats has resulted in the species being declared vulnerable to extinction, to the tree species that relied on them for regeneration, the subsequent alteration to the forest ecology of the eastern states Status and protection To answer some of the growing threats, roost sites have been legally protected since 1986 in New South Wales and since 1994 in Queensland. In 1999, the species was classified as "Vulnerable to extinction" in The Action Plan for Australian Bats, and has since been protected across its range under Australian federal law, listed as Vulnerable under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). A species recovery plan was created by the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment and the South Australian Department for Environment and Water and published in 2021. the species is listed as "Vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species under criteria A2ace and A4ac. Justification for the assessment says that "although the population is relatively large (exceeding 10,000 mature individuals) and it has a large extent of occurrence (> 20,000 km²), a continuing population decline is inferred to be more than 30–35% over the last three generations", and that further decline is expected. Wildlife rescue Baby flying foxes usually come into care after having been separated from their mothers. Babies are often orphaned during four to six weeks of age, when they inadvertently fall off their mothers during flight, often due to disease or tick paralysis (their own and/or that of the mother). Bat caregivers are not only specially trained in techniques to rescue and rehabilitate bats, but they are also vaccinated against rabies. Although the chance of contracting the rabies-like Australian bat lyssavirus is extremely small, bat caregivers are inoculated for their own protection. Gallery References