The ‘flying foxes’ driving Aussies batty
AUSTRALIA: The world’s largest species of bat has descended in vast numbers on Australia’s eastern seaboard prompting councils to offer free air freshener to residents who are being showered with pungent droppings.
The put-upon residents are also being offered electricity subsidies to cover the cost of drying their washing indoors.
Hundreds of thousands of Australian fruit bats - so large they are known as flying foxes - have moved from remote inland habitats into towns and cities 1200km along the east coast. Experts suspect that the clearing of their usual habitats for farming is helping to push them east.
Every night the homes, swimming pools and washing lines of thousands of people from south of Sydney to Queensland are shrouded in faeces, but scientists called to a conference last week to seek solutions struggled to find ways to reduce the havoc being caused by the bats, which can have a wingspan of a metre.
The infestation of 400,000 bats is so bad in the Queensland resort city of Noosa that the council is offering residents free supplies of air freshener, covers for their cars and clothes lines, professional cleaning of solar panels and high pressure jet washers.
It is testing water sprinklers near homes to ‘‘nudge’’ bats away a method already deployed in some communities near Brisbane.
Water sprinklers have also been installed in tree canopies to discourage the bats from taking up residence.
In coastal towns south of Sydney, councils are trying to scare the bats off with smoke, noise and bright lights. A draft dispersal plan proposes spraying trees with deterrents and using giant inflatable men as scarecrows.
Batemans Bay resident Terry McDonough said: ‘‘The stink at night is nauseating, interrupting sleep. Then there’s the noise. It’s gone way past tolerable.’’
Among the options being explored by councils on Sydney’s northern fringes is the creation of a vegetation buffer zone around infested streets in which trees taller than three metres are to be being trimmed or removed to discourage bats from settling.
Martin Predavec, president of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, said better coordination was needed to manage the flying foxes.
‘‘The number of urban [bat] camps is increasing. We need to find the root cause and work to resolve this rather than blindly reacting on a case-by-case basis.’’
The problems caused by the bats have prompted Australia’s parliament to set up an inquiry.
- The Times