Wellington locals celebrated the creatures of the night during Halloween and Australasian Bat Week.

Mid Macquarie Landcare Group organised two events for the community to learn more about local bat species and what we can do to protect them. 

St Mary's Catholic School and Wellington Public School grade 2-6 students came together for Bat Day to learn more about what bats are found locally from Senior Threatened Species Officer with the NSW Government Dr Joanna Haddock.

Then BatNight returned to the Wellington Caves on Friday night, giving community members the opportunity to search for bats and hear about the results of the 2024 Bats in Backyards surveys. 

Local Landcare Coordinator Danielle Littlewood said the events were a huge success.

‘200 students came dressed up for Bat Day and were astounded to hear we’d found a massive 12 species of bats right in the school yard as part of the monitoring’ she said

‘BatNight Returns at the Caves was sold out 2 weeks before the event and 50 locals enjoyed a guided bat tour with Dr Jo, searching for bats in the night sky using anabat technology.

We had a Halloween dress up theme, bat games, good food and a great time was had by all’. 

‘Microbats are an indicator of how healthy an ecosystem is and Wellington has proved to be a major hotspot with over 36,900 bat calls detected over the 2 monitoring seasons’ Dr Jo explains

‘They provide pesticide services to farmers by consuming massive numbers of insects every night so it was great to see a total of 15 species active in and around Wellington in this years survey including 4 species at risk of extinction in NSW’.

‘We are learning so much more about bats in Wellington thanks to the help of local Landcare and citizen scientists’ she said.

Visit our Bats in Backyards, Wellington 2024 Project to find out more about what bats were found or check out our  Facebook Page to see more photos from the event.