Flying Fox Wars

[IFocus]

I won't address your whole post, I see little point. There's clearly a lot of emotion in your tone, .

Come on Sdajii Sinner stated a lot of facts

 

[Sdajii]

Come on Sdajii Sinner stated a lot of facts

If by "stated" you mean "cut and pasted" and by "facts" you mean "a mixture of fact and misinformation, much of which was irrelevant", then yes, yes he did.

If making one post obliges me to respond to every single point of every single response, no matter how numerous or irrelevant, I suppose you'll have to sue me.

 

[roland]

Seems like for everything someone doesn't like, there is one that does:

The Grey-headed Flying-fox is listed as a threatened (vulnerable to extinction) species at State, Federal, and International levels.

Numbers are declining - from many millions in the 1930's to less than 450,000 in 2004, with an estimated 30% decline in population between 1990 and 2000. A recent population study (Divljam 2008) suggests the Grey-headed Flying-fox will be extinct in the wild in around 80-85 years.

Who is the Ku-ring-gai Bat Conservation Society?

* KBCS Inc. is a non profit community organization working for the conservation of all bat species especially the Grey-headed Flying-fox
* The continued work of KBCS Inc. is reliant on receiving government grants and public donations

Lots of Bat stuff on their website: http://www.sydneybats.org.au/cms/


Last time I was in the Sydney Botanic gardens, that bats had decimated quite a large number of important historic trees.

Basically rats with wings ....

 

[IFocus]

If by "stated" you mean "cut and pasted" and by "facts" you mean "a mixture of fact and misinformation, much of which was irrelevant", then yes, yes he did.

Think you are been a little harsh many turn up with opinions but Sinner and Chops came with valid information on cause and effect.

 

[bunyip]

Flying fox permanent colonies are the fault of humans. Flying foxes have been completely nomadic for literally millenia.

Do you get it? They like to travel. They are only stuck where they are because you wanted your quarter acre with landscaped native garden and water feature and a nice view of the "naturescape" or whatever BS it is real estate agents are using these days.

Plague is rubbish. These animals are listed as vulnerable to extinction.

"MYTH:
Flying-foxes are in “plague” numbers. Because flying-foxes are colonial animals – living together in roosts and flying out together at dusk for feeding – they give the impression of existing in very large numbers. But two species are listed as threatened because their numbers have declined so much. Flying-foxes need high rates of survival to maintain their populations. They cannot breed up quickly, as a female can only have one young a year. This is the exact opposite of what is implied
by ‘plague’."

As for the Hendra virus, I already posted 1 point on that and here is what the EPA has to say about Hendra+bats:

Flying foxes are very mobile creatures and can cover large distances, so to say they're 'stuck' in one area is hardly accurate.
I've come across flying foxes in many areas of coastal and semi coastal Queensland - they've been free to travel and they do, but they'll set up camp in one place for weeks or months while a food source lasts, before moving on somewhere else. The more permanent the food source, the more permanent are their camps.

I don't have a quarter acre, I have many acres and flying foxes are no problem to me personally. A few of them turn up in my garden every spring to feed on the blossoms on my eucalypts, and I actually enjoy watching them arriving at dusk, and chattering and arguing among themselves while we sit on the deck at night.
But the farmers in my area don't enjoy having their crops destroyed. And the local council isn't too pleased that the flying foxes started killing some of the magnificent trees in the beautiful Japanese Gardens that have been developed at enormous expense for the enjoyment of the general public.

They're vulnerable to extinction??......sure they are!!! LOL Tell that to the farmers whose crops are invaded by millions of the damn things. There's always some research body claiming that something in great abundance is close to extinction. When I lived in Central QLD it was a particular variety of wallaby that was said to be almost extinct. In actual fact there were thousands of the damn things, we used to shoot them for dog meat. Yet the government never spoke to any landholders or did surveys on our properties to find out the numbers, what they did instead was listened to the conservationists, and then spent millions of dollars buying up grazing properties to be used exclusively as a retreat for these 'endangered' wallabies which were actually not endangered at all.

Very few people are saying that all flying foxes should be exterminated. Thinking people are simply saying that farmers should have the right to protect their crops against these marauders, just the same as you and I have the right to protect our homes from termites and mice and cockroaches and spiders.
What kind of protection the farmers use should be decided by them, not by some idiot sitting in a government office and being advised by conservationists with their notoriously tenuous grasp of reality.
School playgrounds should not have to be closed because of flying foxes. Public recreation areas should not be taken over by flying foxes to the extent that people can no longer enjoy them. Farmers should not have to be forced into spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to net their crops.

Sustained pressure on flying foxes can move them on without the necessity of killing enormous numbers and threatening them with extinction. Yes, they may well return sooner or later, but valuable crops can be saved in the meantime.

There's increasing evidence that the Hendra virus can be picked up from contact with the excrement of flying foxes - this is of particular concern when the foxes move into public areas like parks and playgrounds.

I'm still waiting for someone to come up with some rational argument as to why it should be illegal to take whatever steps are necessary to move flying foxes away from crops and public facilities.

 

[Calliope]

Basically rats with wings ....

Rats are much more cuddly that fruit bats and are not nearly as big a pest, but nobody loves them. Judging by the inputs on this thread the bats out of hell have assumed a cult status.

 

[nunthewiser]

stuff the whales

save a fruitbat

 

[Ato]

Geez, I wonder if we'll see a flying version of the Andy Gil sometime soon...

 

[Sdajii]

stuff the whales

save a fruitbat

Next it will be save the rabbits, foxes, rats and cane toads. I can just about see it happening, heck, some introduced animals which cause environmental damage are already protected!

There are some conservation issues which really do need to be taken seriously, so it's a shame that the tree huggers themselves take focus away from those important issues and make false claims trying to save things which aren't important or don't need saving (save the eastern grey kangaroo comes to mind as one of the most insane examples). Generally it is the passionate, well-intentioned but ill-informed and emotionally-blinded do gooders behind the push for protecting things which shouldn't be protected. Unfortunately, they outnumber the scientists who know what's going on many fold, and sadly, there are some bleeding heart scientists around too. When something important comes up, it just looks like another "Save the ferral bunny rabbit/kangaroo/fruit bat" campaign.

 

[Calliope]

Next it will be save the rabbits, foxes, rats and cane toads. I can just about see it happening, heck, some introduced animals which cause environmental damage are already protected!

Many introduced species are wreaking havoc. I am referring to feral horses, donkeys and camels. The do-gooders are up in arms whenever there is talk of culling these pests, apparently because they are large critters, and very visible (like the whale) and they won't fit into a rat trap.

I don't know whether feral pigs have a support base, but not much is being done to eradicate them.

 

[Trembling Hand]

Many introduced species are wreaking havoc. I am referring to feral horses, donkeys and camels. The do-gooders are up in arms whenever there is talk of culling these pests, apparently because they are large critters, and very visible (like the whale) and they won't fit into a rat trap.

In the Victorian Alpine national park horses are just about in plague conditions. Look at the BS that the governments that are meant to "manage" the problem are faced with doing,

http://www.australianalps.environme...s/research-reports/feral-horses-workshop.html

Feral horse management across the Alps has a long history and often a very high profile within the community both locally, nationally and sometimes internationally. The interest and passion that the topic attracts has often hampered efforts to protect the environment from increasing evidence of environmental impacts. Past attempts to manage horses have been faced with tremendous scrutiny and adverse publicity. In 1987 ACT Parks destroyed a small number of horses in Namadgi National Park, which resulted in a huge public out cry. A similar public outcry followed the destruction of feral horses in Guy Fawkes National Park in November 2000 and also resulted in a moratorium on aerial shooting of horses within protected areas in NSW.

Over recent years, however, across the Australian Alps National Parks (AANP) and in other areas of Australia, there have been significant breakthroughs in feral horse management. The most humane and cost effective methods of control are not always the most popular with the community and conservation agencies are often forced to use more expensive and time consuming live trapping methods to control ever increasing populations.

In recognition of the community's views on feral horse management, agency staff across the alps have started to work with the community to develop strategies for sustainable management and in some cases total eradication of horses from an area. There have been major advancements in technique for trapping, mustering, transporting and handling wild horses as well as development in impact monitoring and population surveys.

"sustainable management" !!!What the hell for?? they are feral!! And they are getting really bad up there. On one open plane in the Victorian Alps at 1700m, I counted 200 odd of these feral things just lazing around munching on probably the most fragile grass lands in Oz and shagging till they couldn't be bothered getting out of my way. Crazy.

 

[bunyip]

Yes Sdajii, I well remember the 'save the kangaroo' campaign that was mounted by the greenies years ago.
Even graziers had to get a permit to shoot a roo for dog meat, despite thousands of them roaming their properties. Not that the graziers ever took any notice of the stupid laws.
The roos were in great abundance at the time, and still are. The greenies flew around in planes and 'counted' the roos, LOL, to get an idea of their numbers!!
I've flown over properties in a helicopter - properties that contain thousands of roos, but you don't see many from the air. Yet these clowns convinced themselves and the government that they could estimate reasonably accurate numbers by flying around in a plane at 200 km per hour!
At no time did the conservationists ever come to us graziers and ask if we could show them around our properties so they could get an idea of roo numbers. Had they done so, we would have been more than happy to oblige.

Then the greenies attempted another of their scare campaigns when the Brigalow Scheme was being implemented in Central Queensland.
For those who don't know, Brigalow is a leguminous tree that grows in very fertile country across central and southern QLD. It forms dense scrub where nothing else grows, not even grass, because the trees take all the moisture. But once the scrub is cleared, the fertile Brigalow soil is transformed into top class cattle country when pasture grasses like Buffel, Green Panic and Rhodes grass are planted.
The government recognised the untapped potential of the Brigalow country, so they resumed millions of acres of leasehold Brigalow country from large properties, subdivided it into chunks of roughly ten thousand to thirty thousand acres, and opened it up for ballot. Those who were successful in winning a ballot block had to comply with certain development conditions to clear the Brigalow scrub and convert it into productive cattle country.

The greenies opposed the Brigalow Scheme on the basis that it would decimate wildlife numbers by destroying the habitat of animals like roos and emus and bandicoots.
If they'd done their research properly they'd have known that roos and emus prefer open grassland with patches of scrub here and there for shade and shelter.
And that's just what was created by clearing the Brigalow country. Graziers are no fools when it comes to environmentally responsible development - they cleared the scrub but they also left plenty of shade areas and windbreaks that benefited both cattle and wildlife.
The newly created open grasslands created a perfect environment for roos and emus and many other wildlife species, and their number increased accordingly. Sure, some creatures were adversely affected too, but overall the Brigalow scheme had the opposite effect to what the greenies predicted.

Too many greenies lack the ability to be rational. They get emotionally attached to cute creatures like roos and wallabies and koalas and flying foxes, and they'll go to enormous lengths to protect them, even if it means inventing lies and circulating misinformation.
But if the creatures are not cute and cuddly, greenies are not interested. I have never, for example, seen a greenie launch a campaign against controlling flies or termites or locusts, yet they're wild native creatures just as flying foxes and koalas and roos are.

I am not anti-wildlife. On the contrary, I love nature and animal and trees and birds, that's why I've chosen to live on acreage surrounded by nature rather than live in towns and cities like most of you do.
But as an intelligent and rational person who is blessed with a fair measure of common sense, I realise the need for balanced thinking when it comes to wildlife.
To say we should never clear any scrub or knock down a tree is blatant stupidity. To allow open slather development that destroys nature and the environment is also blatant stupidity.
It's blatant stupidity to say we should never control flying foxes and other wildlife like crocs and sharks when they reach troublesome numbers and start posing a threat to our livelihoods and our safety and our enjoyment of life.
It's also blatant stupidity to say that every shark or croc or flying fox should be exterminated because sometimes they adversely affect us.

When wildlife and people live in the same areas, there needs to be balance - balance in thinking and balance in planning strategies to deal with any problems that might arise.
Some conservationists exhibit this balance in their thinking. Unfortunately there are many who do not.

 

[bunyip]

Many introduced species are wreaking havoc. I am referring to feral horses, donkeys and camels. The do-gooders are up in arms whenever there is talk of culling these pests, apparently because they are large critters, and very visible (like the whale) and they won't fit into a rat trap.

I don't know whether feral pigs have a support base, but not much is being done to eradicate them.

Ah yes, an excellent example of the emotional immaturity and irrational thinking of your average animal-loving do gooder!
If the animal is appealing (as horses are to most people) they whinge like hell if anyone moves to control them when populations reach troublesome numbers.
If the animal is not appealing, they don't do or say anything to try and protect it.

Over the years there have been a number of government-run campaigns to control wild pig numbers. Mostly they've involved shooting the pigs from helicopters (which incidentally is tremendous sport - I've done it myself many times). The Landline program on ABC TV ran a story on this, complete with footage taken from the chopper of pigs being shot.
I don't recall any complaints from the animal protectionists about the inhumanity of eradicating pigs in this manner. But when it's horses or deer or some animal more appealing than pigs, the bleeding heart do gooders rise up in protest, just like they do with flying foxes.

 

[Sdajii]

Clearing the brigalow was actually quite an environmental problem. Some species were severely harmed by it, things like snakes etc, which most people don't care about. The kangaroos and emus love cleared land, I'm not sure if the greenies were too stupid to understand that, or if it was a deliberate ploy to gain popularity (if you say "save the rare snakes" people will say "Oh yeah? Destroy the lot", but if you say "save the plagues or cute kangaroos and emus" people might say "oh my god don't let those cute things die").

Whether or not clearing the brigalow was worth the environmental damage for the sake of the economic benefit is arguable. Protecting horses, deer, and other vermin is just insane.

Take a look at Kangaroo Island where the unique trees are being destroyed by feral koalas. The local trees evolved without koalas, making them different from anything anywhere else, and very vulnerable to koalas. Some bright spark introduced koalas to the island, and bang, you have an environmental disaster. But try to cull koalas and see how the greenies react! Instead of culling (which could be done cheaply, effectively and humanely) the greenies have demanded an absurd and extremely expensive sterilisation program, where koalas are captured and neutered (much more painful and stressful than a quick kill) then put back out there, while enough fertile koalas remain to continue breeding. The founding koalas of this population were sourced from the south, where koalas are common and in some cases need culling for their own good, but since some populations (mainly in the north) are in trouble, the greenies play the 'endangered' card again.

The masses understand emotion but not science.

 

[awg]

The humble moggy is an unimaginable plague on Australias native animals.

Cats are supremely good hunters, and kill every living thing in their range, before moving on to do the same in a new patch, if they can assert territorial rights over other cats.

 

[bunyip]

Clearing the brigalow was actually quite an environmental problem. Some species were severely harmed by it, things like snakes etc, which most people don't care about. The kangaroos and emus love cleared land, I'm not sure if the greenies were too stupid to understand that, or if it was a deliberate ploy to gain popularity (if you say "save the rare snakes" people will say "Oh yeah? Destroy the lot", but if you say "save the plagues or cute kangaroos and emus" people might say "oh my god don't let those cute things die").

Whether or not clearing the brigalow was worth the environmental damage for the sake of the economic benefit is arguable. Protecting horses, deer, and other vermin is just insane.

Take a look at Kangaroo Island where the unique trees are being destroyed by feral koalas. The local trees evolved without koalas, making them different from anything anywhere else, and very vulnerable to koalas. Some bright spark introduced koalas to the island, and bang, you have an environmental disaster. But try to cull koalas and see how the greenies react! Instead of culling (which could be done cheaply, effectively and humanely) the greenies have demanded an absurd and extremely expensive sterilisation program, where koalas are captured and neutered (much more painful and stressful than a quick kill) then put back out there, while enough fertile koalas remain to continue breeding. The founding koalas of this population were sourced from the south, where koalas are common and in some cases need culling for their own good, but since some populations (mainly in the north) are in trouble, the greenies play the 'endangered' card again.

The masses understand emotion but not science.

The thing is, no development of our country would be possible without clearing. Probably 98% of our cities and towns and houses are built on land that had to be cleared of timber first. Any interference with nature is going to have some negative environmental impact. That always has to be weighed against the economic benefits.
There's no objective measurement of the economic benefits of the Brigalow scheme vs the environmental benefits of leaving the land in its natural state. My personal opinion is that the tremendous financial revenue generated by the farming and grazing industries in the brigalow country far outweigh the environmental damage.

Snakes? Were they really harmed overall by the development of the brigalow country? I lived right in the heart of the brigalow belt for many years, and I can tell you we had no shortage of snakes...red bellied blacks, browns, carpet snakes, black-headed pythons, death adders, whip snakes, green tree snakes. I could name you several other varieties that we had as well, but you get the picture - snakes are common in brigalow country. I'd suggest that a grassy environment provides ideal cover and food sources for a wide variety of creeping, crawling animals that are not suited to living in standing scrub country.
I'll happily walk through scrub country in a pair of shorts, with little chance of snakebite. But I'll never walk through grass country without wearing long pants and sturdy boots.

Vast tracts of Queensland's brigalow country have now been taken over by the coal mining industry. Now that really is environmental damage.
Clearing the brigalow for grazing purposes created a favourable environment for many animal species, with a corresponding increase in their numbers. Different story with coal mining - no positive effects on the environment at all, and totally devastating for the wildlife that lives there, or used to before the mines showed up.

But here again the question arises - are the economic benefits of mining sufficient to outweigh the negative impact on the environment? Clearly our government thinks so.

For the benefit of you flying fox lovers, some areas of the brigalow belt have gradually changed over from cattle to farming of grain and horticultural crops, including mangoes, grapes, avocadoes, lychees. The flying foxes are loving it!

 

[Sdajii]

bunyip: Obviously you can't build a shopping center or housing estate without destroying habitat. I understand that, and as I said, I'm not sure whether or not clearing the brigalow was a good thing.

Yes, some of the common species of snakes you list thrive in modified habitat, but for that reason they are all common and widespread. Specialist species are the ones you'll wipe out when you destroy or modify special habitat such as the brigalow belt. Unfortunately, these are the ones which are rare and have restricted distributions. Things like Red-bellied Blacks, Browns, Carpet Pythons and Whip Snakes are not in any risk in southern QLD, and even a snake lover like me is content to see them locally wiped out in the name of progress. Brigalow Woma Pythons as an example, are all but extinct, as they can't live in modified habitat.

I think this is the main conservation issue which is lost due to a lack of understanding. The do gooders desperately try to campaign to save a population of common kangaroos, or worse still, brumbies or other vermin, and act as though losing one brush-tailed possum is as bad as losing a whole species. Sometimes losing a million animals doesn't matter, but losing a small few is tragic.

 

[IFocus]

Next it will be save the rabbits, foxes, rats and cane toads. I can just about see it happening, heck, some introduced animals which cause environmental damage are already protected!

There are some conservation issues which really do need to be taken seriously, so it's a shame that the tree huggers themselves take focus away from those important issues and make false claims trying to save things which aren't important or don't need saving (save the eastern grey kangaroo comes to mind as one of the most insane examples). Generally it is the passionate, well-intentioned but ill-informed and emotionally-blinded do gooders behind the push for protecting things which shouldn't be protected. Unfortunately, they outnumber the scientists who know what's going on many fold, and sadly, there are some bleeding heart scientists around too. When something important comes up, it just looks like another "Save the ferral bunny rabbit/kangaroo/fruit bat" campaign.

If you have evidence of these claims post them, I refer you to my previous post about opinions..........sigh

 

[IFocus]

In the Victorian Alpine national park horses are just about in plague conditions. Look at the BS that the governments that are meant to "manage" the problem are faced with doing,

http://www.australianalps.environme...s/research-reports/feral-horses-workshop.html



"sustainable management" !!!What the hell for?? they are feral!! And they are getting really bad up there. On one open plane in the Victorian Alps at 1700m, I counted 200 odd of these feral things just lazing around munching on probably the most fragile grass lands in Oz and shagging till they couldn't be bothered getting out of my way. Crazy.

TH this is not green types upset its communities

 

[IFocus]

Yes Sdajii, I well remember the 'save the kangaroo' campaign that was mounted by the greenies years ago.
Even graziers had to get a permit to shoot a roo for dog meat, despite thousands of them roaming their properties. Not that the graziers ever took any notice of the stupid laws.
The roos were in great abundance at the time, and still are. The greenies flew around in planes and 'counted' the roos, LOL, to get an idea of their numbers!!
I've flown over properties in a helicopter - properties that contain thousands of roos, but you don't see many from the air. Yet these clowns convinced themselves and the government that they could estimate reasonably accurate numbers by flying around in a plane at 200 km per hour!
At no time did the conservationists ever come to us graziers and ask if we could show them around our properties so they could get an idea of roo numbers. Had they done so, we would have been more than happy to oblige.

Then the greenies attempted another of their scare campaigns when the Brigalow Scheme was being implemented in Central Queensland.
For those who don't know, Brigalow is a leguminous tree that grows in very fertile country across central and southern QLD. It forms dense scrub where nothing else grows, not even grass, because the trees take all the moisture. But once the scrub is cleared, the fertile Brigalow soil is transformed into top class cattle country when pasture grasses like Buffel, Green Panic and Rhodes grass are planted.
The government recognised the untapped potential of the Brigalow country, so they resumed millions of acres of leasehold Brigalow country from large properties, subdivided it into chunks of roughly ten thousand to thirty thousand acres, and opened it up for ballot. Those who were successful in winning a ballot block had to comply with certain development conditions to clear the Brigalow scrub and convert it into productive cattle country.

The greenies opposed the Brigalow Scheme on the basis that it would decimate wildlife numbers by destroying the habitat of animals like roos and emus and bandicoots.
If they'd done their research properly they'd have known that roos and emus prefer open grassland with patches of scrub here and there for shade and shelter.
And that's just what was created by clearing the Brigalow country. Graziers are no fools when it comes to environmentally responsible development - they cleared the scrub but they also left plenty of shade areas and windbreaks that benefited both cattle and wildlife.
The newly created open grasslands created a perfect environment for roos and emus and many other wildlife species, and their number increased accordingly. Sure, some creatures were adversely affected too, but overall the Brigalow scheme had the opposite effect to what the greenies predicted.

Too many greenies lack the ability to be rational. They get emotionally attached to cute creatures like roos and wallabies and koalas and flying foxes, and they'll go to enormous lengths to protect them, even if it means inventing lies and circulating misinformation.
But if the creatures are not cute and cuddly, greenies are not interested. I have never, for example, seen a greenie launch a campaign against controlling flies or termites or locusts, yet they're wild native creatures just as flying foxes and koalas and roos are.

I am not anti-wildlife. On the contrary, I love nature and animal and trees and birds, that's why I've chosen to live on acreage surrounded by nature rather than live in towns and cities like most of you do.
But as an intelligent and rational person who is blessed with a fair measure of common sense, I realise the need for balanced thinking when it comes to wildlife.
To say we should never clear any scrub or knock down a tree is blatant stupidity. To allow open slather development that destroys nature and the environment is also blatant stupidity.
It's blatant stupidity to say we should never control flying foxes and other wildlife like crocs and sharks when they reach troublesome numbers and start posing a threat to our livelihoods and our safety and our enjoyment of life.
It's also blatant stupidity to say that every shark or croc or flying fox should be exterminated because sometimes they adversely affect us.

When wildlife and people live in the same areas, there needs to be balance - balance in thinking and balance in planning strategies to deal with any problems that might arise.
Some conservationists exhibit this balance in their thinking. Unfortunately there are many who do not.

You want talk land clearing being good check out WA one big salt lake as a result of.


http://www.anra.gov.au/topics/salinity/pubs/national/salinity_wa.html