After expert-backed public consultation in 2023, the Queensland government committed to phasing out lethal permits to shoot flying foxes. That promise was quietly overturned in late 2025 — condemning thousands of animals from this keystone species, including vulnerable grey-headed flying foxes, to ongoing and entirely preventable suffering.

The backflip came just months before the phase-out was due to begin, and without any formal consultation. It reversed a long-overdue step toward humane wildlife policy, and has once again placed Queensland out of step with other states that have already ended the shooting of flying foxes due to unacceptable welfare and environmental risks.

Shooting flying foxes is cruel and ineffective. It causes prolonged suffering to animals who are rarely killed instantly, and to their dependent young who are left to die when their mothers are shot. Devastatingly, this harm is entirely unnecessary; humane, non-lethal crop protection methods have been proven to work and are already in use.

At a time when wildlife needs protection more than ever, continuing to kill flying foxes is both unjustifiable and deeply out of step with what science, and community, know to be right. Queenslanders and fellow Australians expect wildlife to be treated with care, not as expendable ‘pests’.

The common use of shotguns by orchardists causes significant suffering to flying foxes. These animals are small, fast-moving, and often roost high above the ground, making it virtually impossible to immediately kill them with a ‘single’ shot. When sprayed with pellets, they can be wounded, suffering broken bones, torn wing membranes, and pellets lodged in their organs leaving them to die slowly, often out of sight.

Dependent young are the unseen victims of shooting. Pups cling to their mothers for up to eight weeks and cannot survive on their own. When mothers are shot, pups may continue to cling to them and be injured, or later die from starvation, exposure, or predation — suffering for hours or days before death. These sensitive animals should not have to endure such cruelty as ‘collateral damage’ of lethal mitigation permits.

Flying foxes are a keystone native species. Through pollination and seed dispersal across eastern Australia, they help forests regenerate and biodiversity thrive.

Shooting permits include grey-headed flying foxes, who are already vulnerable and considered a priority species for urgent intervention following bushfires by the Threatened Species Bushfire Recovery Expert Panel (2020). Continued killing undermines biodiversity protection efforts and weakens ecosystems already under pressure from climate disasters and habitat destruction.

Non-lethal crop protection methods, such as full-coverage netting, have proven effective and are already used successfully by growers. Government support programs exist, such as the current Horticultural Netting Program, and they should be expanded to ensure all primary producers can access humane, long-term solutions, without killing wildlife.

Ending lethal ‘control’ methods for flying foxes would align Queensland with other Australian states that have already banned them due to unacceptable welfare and environmental outcomes. It’s time for Queensland’s policy to catch up — and for flying foxes to be protected, not persecuted.

Urge Queensland’s Minister for the Environment to honour the commitment to phase out all lethal permits to shoot flying foxes by July 2026, and to invest instead in sustainable, ethically responsible crop protection that works for both orchardists and wildlife.

Flying foxes can’t speak for themselves. But together, we can.