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  • 4 hours ago
As the recovery operation from tropical cyclone Narelle begins, the impact on wildlife has been slowly starting to emerge. Some towns have discovered hundreds of dead baby flying foxes littering the streets, lead to concerns for the wider ecosystem.

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00:01A baby looking for mother's comfort.
00:05One of dozens of orphaned flying foxes saved by wildlife carers.
00:11Hundreds of dead, they're falling around you while you're trying to rescue other ones.
00:17Falling to the ground screaming, dead on the floor like we've just missed them.
00:21Wildlife workers say it's not disease killing them, but starvation.
00:26From what we gather, the adults all took off prior to the cyclone and they have left their babies there.
00:31So most of the babies are orphaned and there's hundreds, hundreds to thousands of babies just alone.
00:36For a territory to have a flying fox crash of this scale, it's fairly unprecedented.
00:43More than 20 volunteers are trying to save as many as possible.
00:48Driving almost every day between Catherine and Darwin to collect living bats and safely dispose of the dead.
00:55Another little one.
00:56On arrival in Darwin, an army of qualified wildlife carers takes over.
01:02Most of the ones that are in at the moment, they're on five feeds a day.
01:05So our morning starts pretty early.
01:08And on top of that, of course, having to get kids ready for school, getting to work.
01:14A lot of us also work full time.
01:16So we're trying to do this in and around our jobs as well.
01:19They requested help from Parks and Wildlife, but were denied.
01:24NT Health are urging Territorians to avoid contact with any bats they may find.
01:30We reached out to Parks and Wildlife for comment, who referred us back to NT Health.
01:35The wider ecological impact of this calamity is still unclear, with a major pollinator's population decimated.
01:46Thank you for the inspiration.
01:47We'll continue to remind you.
01:48I believe?
01:49Yes, I believe.
01:49You do
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