Tourists wing it to see our bat colony
GERMAN tourist Detlev Moritwitz can’t understand why there’s so much fuss about flying foxes in Cairns, but he can understand why other visitors might want to see the creatures.
“I didn’t know about this animal before,” he said after seeing a photo outside the bat’s notorious city roost near the library on Abbott St.
“When you come to a new country you have to look at all the animals. I have no problem with them.”
Recently, Cairns Regional Council created a flying fox advisory group, which aims to “provide advice and recommendations to Cairns Regional Council on flying fox management”.
CSIRO principal research scientist Dr David Westcott is one of two scientists in the group, and said bats in a city’s CBD could be a major drawcard for tourists.
“It is one of the many things that attracts people to Cairns,” Dr Westcott said.
“I have talked to tourists in a variety of places who’ve been here and one thing they say is that flying foxes are amazing. They are clearly engaged by the flying foxes.”
Cairns Regional Council has been at pains to strike a balance between the tourism potential for the Abbott St colony and their disruptive behaviour, and in May last year, pruned the bats’ favourite trees in an effort to deter them.
But the bats returned, a behaviour Dr Westcott said was to be expected.
“The Cairns council is not the only council to discover it’s hard to move bats,” he said.
“The experience up and down the east coast of Australia for more than 100 years now is that you try and get rid of flying foxes and they keep coming back.
“Flying foxes choose places s to roost and they like them.”
Mayor Bob Manning said there was a place for bats in the CBD, but their numbers needed to be kept under control. -
“We have a population in n the city now and it’s a small ll number and we can coexist ... .. quite easily,” he said.
“If the number gets too o big, then like anything, the e balance tips.
“The Novotel just next xt door to the library, they hadd trouble booking rooms out ut because of the noise and the smell – too much of anything is not good.”