A central Queensland Girl Guides group has been busy sewing "mumma wraps" for an increasing number of orphaned flying foxes.
Wildlife carers say thousands of bats across Australia are in "dire straits" with many suffering due to the drought, bushfires and ongoing heat.
In December last year, 23,000 spectacled flying foxes — about a third of the species' population in Australia — died in north Queensland.
Last week in South Australia, dehydrated pups were "falling from the sky" in a heatwave and in New South Wales an estimated 1,700 deaths were recorded over the period of a month.
Michelle Kraatz has spent thousands of dollars and countless hours rescuing, caring for, and rehabilitating flying foxes in central Queensland.
"I've done 192 rescues within 94 days, it's been really full on," she said.
"I thought last year and the year before was bad, but it's even worse this year."
Mimicking the safety of mum
The pups need special fabric wraps called "mumma wraps", to mimic the safety of their mother.
When the South Rockhampton Girl Guides heard local bat carers were in need of more wraps, they started work with a needle and thread.
"We decided that would be a really great activity for the girls to be able to learn to sew," Shannon Scofield, district manager of the South Rockhampton Girl Guides said.
"We just try and find different things throughout the community that we can give back to others and the girls learn a skill as well."
For most of the children aged from five to 13, it is the first time they have touched a sewing machine.
"It is supporting guides and helping bats," guide Samantha Bendall said.
"Some bats don't have mums and they need the cuddle thing and that is why it's kind of like cuddling their mumma," guide Charlotte Diegutis said.
Bats 'in a lot of trouble'
Ms Kraatz has dedicated more than eight years of her life to rehabilitating bats.
"They're in a lot of trouble, we're in severe drought and they are starving," she said.
"Then we've had all the fires go through, so what forest they were feeding on is now gone.
"They're in dire straits. Every single bat that I've had in, has been extremely, extremely underweight this year, terribly."
Ms Kraatz said heatwaves, fires, climate change, power lines, barbed wire and non-wildlife friendly fruit netting are all contributing to their decline.
"They're the most misunderstood and persecuted animal, yet they're the most vital animal we can have in Australia purely because they're a keystone species," she said.
"There's a lot of fear-mongering and that scares a lot of people.
"They're not the disease-ridden animals that they're perceived to be."
Ms Kraatz said the animals are an important part of a healthy ecosystem.
"One bat can disperse up to 66,000 seeds a night and they're our only night time pollinator and most trees can only be pollinated at night because the stigmas only open at night," she said.
"We also need them now the fires have gone through to regenerate all those forests and to support all the other wildlife as well.
"In the end healthy ecosystems also support us, human life."
What to do if you find an injured bat
A Queensland Department of Environment and Science spokesman said the public should not handle bats without the necessary precautions.
"Catching diseases from bats is extremely unlikely," he said.
"Australian bat lyssavirus can only be caught from untreated bites or scratches from infected bats."
The best thing to do if you find an injured bat is to contact your local wildlife carer organisation or the RSPCA.
"They'll send out someone who is vaccinated and is trained to handle a flying fox or a bat," Ms Kraatz said.
