Surrounded by vast sugarcane farms, pristine rainforest, empty beaches and lush waterfalls, Cameron Bates’ new home of Ingham, a town in northern Australia, was a welcome breath of fresh air after the 16 years he’d spent living and working in Jakarta, Indonesia. In 2019, Bates moved into an apartment in the center of Ingham, overlooking the town’s main Rotary Park and just minutes away from the community’s beloved Botanical Gardens, war memorial and adjacent green spaces. But these were also all locations that the town’s population of flying foxes, members of the fruit bat family, had come to call home.  While Ingham’s flying foxes had taken up residence there for at least the previous decade, the colony was growing thanks to four different sub-species coming together to roost, resulting in a population so massive that at one point it was over 500,000. These figures far outnumbered the local human population of less than 5,000. At dusk, Bates would marvel at a nightly event he quickly became accustomed to: Thousands of the native bats awakening for the evening and leaving the safety of their roost to forage for fruit and nectar before returning at dawn. The creatures would transform the night sky, their black silhouettes dancing across the sunset as their shrill cries echoed across town. Little did Bates realize that this natural phenomenon would come to consume his professional life, and life in his new home. A sight to behold or ‘an infestation that had reached biblical proportions’? Credit: Hinchinbrook Shire Council “I never had an issue with the flying foxes, as I had moved to the area from one of the most polluted, poverty-stricken cities on the planet, and I was then witnessing firsthand this incredible nightly spectacle,” recalls Bates, a senior journalist at regional newspaper The Townsville Bulletin. “I was completely unaware of the depth of feeling against the flying foxes in the community […] But it became the number one issue over the next few years. In one of countless stories I wrote about it, I described it as ‘an infestation that had reached biblical proportions.’”  And then it got worse. A heatwave caused many of the flying foxes — which can carry a number of deadly viruses — to drop mid-flight, says Bates, falling into locations including local school yards, leading some parents to boycott sending their kids to school. Central amenities including Rotary Park, the Botanical Gardens and bus stops for the two local elementary schools had to be cordoned off, and businesses nearby had to close due to the sheer number of flying foxes rendering the area unsafe. The bats had also come to roost near a local kindergarten, which therefore had to close. Weighed down by negative news? Our smart, bright, weekly newsletter is the uplift you’ve been looking for. [contact-form-7] The flying foxes had transformed their surroundings, and not for the better — bat urine and faeces covered the ground, and the animals completely decimated the very trees they were nesting in. In 2020, the swarm of bats was so thick that an emergency helicopter was not able to land at the nearby hospital. “It was horrific,” local mayor Ramon Jayo of the Hinchinbrook Shire Council says. “The stench was unbelievable. The Botanical Gardens were a disaster. All the trees were shaggy. It was like a war zone. There was no going in there anymore. That really upset me because that’s where our war memorial is, and it was disgraceful that we weren’t maintaining that area because of these bats […] They had to go.” Mayor Jayo was facing pressure from some residents to cull the animals, but flying foxes are protected in Australia, not just as a native species but, much like bees, as environmentally significant pollinators and seed dispersers. “Every day I would get people telling me to shoot the flying foxes, but it would have been like a drop of water in a bucket,” Mayor Jayo says. “We knew we’d come up with a better method, because we’re surrounded by pristine rainforests and mangroves. So it’s not as if there was no habitat for them to go to.” Previous councils had used one-off dispersal tactics — banging on drums and saucepans at dawn to disrupt the flying foxes on their return from feeding, prompting them to seek alternative accommodation. But this only had a temporary effect, as Mayor Jayo would later find out that it would take a sustained effort lasting years to keep the bats at bay. At that point, Mayor Jayo called in the experts. He signed a check for A$300,000 ($195,500 U.S.) to Biodiversity Australia, a private consultancy that specializes in working out a solution for when humans and wildlife clash. Hinchinbrook Shire Council then received a A$60,000 ($40,000 U.S.) grant from the state government of Queensland, where Ingham is located, to support its efforts. Steven Noy and his team spent three months humanely relocating Ingham’s resident flying fox population. Credit: Biodiversity Australia At the helm of Biodiversity Australia is Steven Noy, who founded the organization in 2002 and who says he is yet to meet an animal he hasn’t been able to persuade to move elsewhere — be it koala, kangaroo, snake, magpie, or flying fox.  Over the past 15 years, Biodiversity Australia has worked with 25 councils and private entities whose towns and properties have been overrun by flying foxes, including a colony of 1.5 million that had taken over a camp site in the Northern Territory tourist attraction of Carnarvon Gorge. “We’ve never harmed an animal. […] It’s all about deterrent and behavioral change. As humans, we’ve created these problems, so we need to be ready to have a solution without lethal means,” Noy says. “We get people telling us, ‘shoot every last one.’ But it’s not doing anything because animals don’t react to death. If you shoot one flying fox, they won’t even notice the difference within the mob itself. Another animal just takes its place.” Noy and his team use the dispersal tactics that had failed previously — banging drums and saucepans at known flying fox sites at 4 a.m. But then they take it up a notch with full-scale pyrotechnics, which includes smoke and bright lights. Some skeptical residents, who had set up sound systems and drum-banging brigades of their own, questioned what A$300,000 was buying that they couldn’t achieve on their own. That, says Noy, was an action plan that involved closely tracking and understanding the flying foxes. In 2020, Noy and his team spent three months in Ingham doing just that. Then, when it came time to deploy the noise over two intense early mornings — accompanied by the Mayor and local politicians — Noy had a pretty good idea of where they would go, namely a wetlands on the outskirts of town, or to join a small colony based at one of the beaches. “That morning at the Botanical Gardens, it looked like the old war stories, where you see smoke and bombs and guns and everything going off. It took about three to four hours for the smoke to clear,” says Mayor Jayo, who describes Biodiversity Australia’s efforts as “amazing.” When the flying foxes arrived at their chosen new locations, Noy’s teams were ready to check that there were no disturbances that would stop them from settling. At the wetlands, they realized that mowers and maintenance teams were creating noise, preventing the bats from getting comfortable, so that was called off. The flying foxes that once transformed Ingham have now relocated to more remote places such as the mountains to the north of the town. Credit: Craig Dingle / Shutterstock “The timing is absolutely crucial. You have a very short window just before light to get your day’s job done. If you miss that, or you’re in the wrong location of that day, the day’s over,” says Noy. “People think humans are so smart and that animals are dumb. They don’t understand how they communicate, what they do, what they see.” Five years on, the flying foxes have moved further afield, to the mountains to the north of Ingham, to the mangrove trees along the coastline, and to the banks of the Herbert River, a vital waterway that first drew European settlers to the region in the 1860s. But to this day, Hinchinbrook Shire Council spends A$3,000 (around $2,000 U.S.) per month on a daily early morning crew that patrols the former flying fox hotspots for any individuals that may be taking a chance on returning to their old stomping ground, as the animals send “scouts” to check if they can return “home.” If any flying foxes are spotted, the drum and saucepan banging recommences until said scouts are gone. This will be the case at least until the generation of flying foxes that was born in town dies out and makes way for new generations that are born in the new habitats, without any memory of the town. “It’s not a situation that’s going to go away,” says Noy, who likens the ongoing deterrent maintenance work to other council activities such as mowing and weed control. “Studies have proven that the population isn’t in decline, it’s actually increased, because when you get a parkland and you mow it, trim the trees, irrigate it, you’re creating a cooling environment that attracts flying foxes. We just have to work out what other sites we can try and push them to.” Mayor Jayo acknowledges that, despite now being able to restore the likes of the Botanical Gardens, “we haven’t won the war.” And he has an equally significant battle on his hands: Educating locals who think Ingham’s flying fox troubles have ended, or those who are new to town as to why they are subject to drum and saucepan banging at dawn. Wait, you're not a member yet? Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can. Join Cancel anytime “I probably get more complaints from people now that the bats aren’t there, because they don’t see the problem anymore,” he says. “They don’t like being woken up on a Saturday and Sunday by someone banging drums outside their window. But you know, I just listen to them and then I say, ‘this is why we don’t want to be back to where we were in 2020 — this is the reason we’re doing it.” For Bates, who has heard all types of resident comments — positive and negative — in his reporting of the issue, he concludes that relocating Ingham’s flying foxes “was worth every cent” and the ongoing cost is a small price to pay. “I am looking across Rotary Park now,” he says, “and the historic kauri pine trees have recovered. The smell of bat sh*t and urine has long dissipated, and locals and tourists are free to enjoy the gardens without fear of a dead bat falling on them.” The post How a Tiny Australian Town Relocated 500,000 Flying Foxes appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.