About Us
Stonedeaf wildlife Townsville is volunteer based charitable organisation based in Townsville North Queensland.
We are dedicated to the rescue and rehabilitation and release of flying foxes and microbats. We cover an area from Ingham to Ayr and west to Charters Towers. Our mission is to educate and eradicate urban myths regarding the ecological importance of these beloved species. Looking forward we would like to be involved in rehabilitation of land with possibly a educational centre.
What We Fight For
Flying foxes are a Keystone species, this means that the entire ecosystem would be different or cease to exist without them. In this case, our beloved flying fox are excellent pollinators and seed dispersers, helping to ensure the health, regeneration and genetic diversity of our Australian forests and hardwood trees. Flying foxes naturally feed off of the pollen and nectar from blossoms and the fruits of rain forest trees. Many of the trees flying foxes feed from are only receptive to pollination at night, the birds and the bees are asleep, and the flying foxes are hard at work as they travel across our beautiful landscape.
A flying fox will travel up to 80km from their roost at night, while they are out foraging, they feed on and consume the sweet nectar from native blossoms (melaleucas, banksias, eucalypts), the pollen sticks to their fur on their belly and face and will rub off from flower to flower, tree to tree, thus pollinating the flowers as they travel. When a flying fox consumes native fruit, they process their food rather quickly, as they are highly mobile while travelling at night, they defecate and are able to disperse seeds both locally and over great distances. Seeds have a higher chance of thriving when they are dispersed and are able to germinate some distance from their parent tree.
Providing these ecological services, flying fox are able ensure the health and genetic diversity of what little forest we have left, in turn providing timber, carbon exchange, water catchments, and valuable habitat for other animals who rely on native forests in order to survive. For example, without our flying foxes, we would not have the beautiful eucalypt forest our koalas depend upon for food and housing.
Microbats on the other hand are excellent at insect control. A small microbat can consume up to half of its body weight while foraging at night, this roughly translates to about 500 mosquitos per hour! Microbats can help to control pest insects which affect crops and decimate certain insects responsible for carrying diseases like malaria.