Tolga Bat Hospital

04/06/2026

We did this again too. The visitor centre is considered by Tripadvisor to be among the top 10% of things to do worldwide, based on the number of ***** reviews.

02/06/2026

We did it again, this time gold gold gold.

31/05/2026

Our beautiful big bat has been refurbished and hangs again from the carport. She welcomes (and some times bewilders, shocks) people to our visitor centre. She's made locally from recycled materials.

29/05/2026

Hope this is a true story

When the abandoned textile factory in central Texas that had housed a colony of 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats for forty years was finally demolished for redevelopment, conservation biologists had spent months preparing for what they feared would be an ecological catastrophe. Bats are intensely loyal to roost sites, returning to the same locations generation after generation, and displacing a colony of this size with no established alternative site historically results in massive population loss. The demolition was scheduled despite their objections, and on the morning it occurred, the conservationists could only watch and document. The bats, disturbed by the first impacts, poured into the Texas sky in the largest single emergence any of them had witnessed. What happened over the following seventy-two hours constitutes one of the most remarkable navigation events ever documented in bat biology. The colony, without a roost site, began flying. Not randomly with a directional coherence that suggested collective decision-making. Using echolocation, magnetic field sensitivity, and what researchers believe may be a form of collective acoustic memory mapped over generations of flight routes, the colony moved across forty miles of Texas landscape to a limestone cave system that had been identified by conservation biologists as a potential roost site but had never been used by this colony. They had never been there. They found it anyway. Within four days, all 1.5 million bats had settled in the cave. The conservation team who witnessed the arrival described it as one of the most astonishing things they had ever seen in the field the sky darkening above the cave entrance as the colony descended in waves over three hours, filling chambers that the biologists had mapped but never seen occupied. The cave is now formally protected. The colony has established fully and produced their first Texas-born generation in the new roost. The factory site is now a parking garage. The cave is a World Heritage candidate. One and a half million bats chose correctly.

Share the million who found their way.

27/05/2026

Great shot and great news for the flying fox.

Wanted to reshare this shot. Technically it’s not a great photo , heavily cropped, poor light, not very sharp, but sometimes the moment matters more than the pixels.

A White bellied sea eagle above with the murder mittens fully deployed and this little red flying fox suddenly pulling fighter-jet level aerial manoeuvres straight toward the deck.

For a few seconds it turned into Top Gun: Bat Edition.

The little bloke somehow dodged the grab and lived to flap another day. Absolute sky ninja. 🦇🦅

08/05/2026

From David Bat-en-borough to David Attenborough. Our David got a special treat for dinner tonight in honour of his namesake's 100th bday. He's a Diadem leaf-nosed bat.

08/05/2026

We were so happy to bring the story of Tolga Bat Hospital all the way to Taiwan recently! 🦇💚

A huge thank you to Sanduo Elementary School for welcoming us and giving us the opportunity to talk about bats, wildlife rescue, and conservation with the students.
One of the most rewarding parts of giving talks like these is seeing how quickly children can learn to understand and appreciate bats. By the end of the session, they were asking thoughtful questions, showing empathy for wildlife, and seeing bats in a completely different perspective. Appreciation is such an important part of conservation and we’re incredibly proud to share these animals with the next generation.

01/05/2026

Two days of enjoyable filming with Studio Freek TV from the Netherlands. Cass in the bat t-shirt is employed here while Vivvy is away for 6 weeks.

22/04/2026

A ‘Chicken Palace’ for Bats

Since the beginning of March, we’ve released more than two hundred endangered spectacled flying foxes through our newly built release cage in Tolga Scrub! A big thank you to the WIRES National Grant Program for the funding for the cage, the verandahs and an electric power washer that we use for cleaning.

Read full blog below:
https://tolgabathospital.org/2026/04/17/a-chicken-palace-for-bats/

17/04/2026

A lovely article about us in Bats magazine from Bat Conservation International (BCI). We recently enjoyed visits by a few of their staff during the International Bat Research Conference in nearby Cairns.

Australia is famous for its wildlife, from kangaroos to koalas to kookaburras. But perhaps the country should have another ambassador, one with expressive brown eyes, velvety wings, and a talent for pollinating the rainforest...