Use safe fruit nets

Wildlife can get injured and die from unsafe garden netting. Help protect our precious wildlife by swapping your old, large-mesh nets for wildlife-friendly nets in our netting swap program.

Use netting that protects your fruit and our wildlife

Flying-foxes, possums, birds and other wildlife get tangled in fruit and vegetable netting and can die from the resulting injuries.

To help protect them, use wildlife-friendly netting, or don’t use netting at all.

We’re helping ACT residents to use wildlife-friendly netting by swapping unsafe nets for free.

The wildlife-friendly netting has been purchased with funds from the ACT Government.

What is wildlife-friendly netting?

Wildlife-friendly netting has a small mesh size. It’s also better if the netting is white because animals can avoid this more easily.

To check if your netting mesh is too big, do the ‘finger test’. If you can easily poke your finger through the mesh then animals could get tangled in it.

If that sounds like one of your nets, we’ll replace it for free.

How to swap your unsafe nets for free

To get free wildlife-friendly netting, bring your old, large-mesh netting to the ACT Wildlife office during one of the times in the net swap calendar below. We may make more times available, so keep an eye out for updates.

Net swap calendar

The Net Swap Program has closed for 2023. Keep an eye out here for the 2024 calendar.

What you get

The free replacement netting is white and comes in 3 types:

4 m x 4 m sheet of netting
netting sleeves
netting bags.

The bags and sleeves can be placed over fruit you want to protect. These are great for protecting your best fruit, while sharing the excess with wildlife.

We’re swapping approximately one for one. For example, if you bring in netting for two trees, we’ll give you two 4m x 4m nets or some net sleeves or bags.

Who is eligible

The Wildlife Friendly Netting Swap program is available to all ACT home gardeners with mesh netting that your finger goes through easily. We’ll swap both fruit and vegetable garden netting.

You’re not eligible if you are: