Driven-batty Katter hails heatwave ‘cull’

MAVERICK Federal MP Bob Katter is pleased that bats have died in their thousands in Cairns, claiming it is evidence that “God is on our side”.

Spectacled flying foxes from the Daintree to the Cassowary Coast hit the deck in their thousands last week as temperatures reached record highs.

The Member for Kennedy said the numbers of bats were at plague proportions.

“They are a plague, in plague proportions,” Mr Katter said. “A plague is an example of something that is detrimental to humans.”

Mr Katter said he walked the streets of Cairns in fear of being scratched or having droppings fall from the sky.

“In this heatwave we have field hospitals being created for this disease-carrying vermin,” he said.

“Will FNQ Wildlife Rescue also hand out icepacks to rats and help fan rabbits?”

But a leading bat expert is at odds with Mr Katter in regard to the high bat mortality rates.

Research scientist David Westcott said bats were important pollinators and, unlike most airborne inseminators, flying foxes could disperse seeds over great distances.

“They are already a species we are really quite concerned about and the population has declined dramatically the last 10-15 years,” he said. “We might expect it will take the population a long time to recover from this.”

Mr Westcott admitted bats did not make great neighbours and was aware many felt a natural cull was a positive outcome.

“If you live close to a bat roost you are not going to like bats but you have to remember … they are actually doing something that helps us,” he said.

In Edmonton the stench of thousands of rotting bats forced one family from their home and triggered a state and local government clean-up.

Philippa Schroor has been living in a motel with her husband and two children all week after flies and the smell of liquefied bat remains rendered her home inhabitable.

“It has been a very traumatic event and very stressful so I am relieved and glad … something happened,” she said.

Not a single living bat was left living in the suburban patch of bushland.