Bat project sponsorship brings hope
R100 000 plan will help Missionvale residents plagued by mosquito swarms
ASPONSOR has come forward to fund an innovative project to introduce bats to tackle the mosquito swarms plaguing the residents of Mackay’s Ground in Missionvale. Dedisa Peaking Power will be sponsoring the project, which will involve the construction and installation of 20 to 30 aerial bat boxes to attract and house “a good couple of thousand bats”.
The initiative will be implemented by the Urban Raptor Project, which is hoping to install the boxes 4m to 5m above the razor tape on the existing pylons that run electrical cables through the area.
Dedisa must first liaise with Eskom but, if the strategy is approved, it would be a first for the country and possibly globally, opening the way for the invasive steel towers to be used for various kinds of raptor roosts.
The R100 000 sponsorship follows The Herald’s January story about the mosquito misery in Mackay’s Ground and the proposal by Urban Raptor Project founder Arnold Slabbert, who said bats could solve the problem.
Marius Engelbrecht, operations director of Dedisa’s Coega plant, said the bat box proposal had been reviewed by Dedisa’s social and ethics committee.
“We must still find out whether it’s Eskom or the municipality we must talk to regarding putting the boxes on the pylons, and there are other logistical aspects involved, so I can’t say exactly when the project will get under way. But I can confirm we will be sponsoring it.”
Dedisa community liaison officer Jabulile Motlhako said the company had committed R100 000 to the project.
Slabbert said the boxes would each have a textured “landing strip” to allow the bats to easily alight and slots in the walls to allow them to climb up to roost upsidedown.” “I will probably make the boxes out of wood and each one will be big enough for a couple of hundred bats to roost. They like confined dark spaces so each box will be about 70cm³.”
He said the challenge was to make the boxes stable but easily transferrable via a system of hooks to summer and winter roosting positions and variations in sunlight.
The hope is to have the boxes ready by spring when the bats emerge from their winter torpor on the lookout for new roosts.
Research has shown a single bat can eat 130 mosquitos an hour so a colony could dispatch hundreds of thousands a night.
The further benefit is that as opposed to insecticides which are expensive, shortlived at best and would harm the other mozzie-guzzling creatures like frogs that may survive in the Mackay’s Ground vlei, bats provide a sustainable solution.
A Herald survey showed that while a few residents harboured the traditional fear that bats would “eat the hair of the people”, most were in favour of the project.