Going batty - Manning vs flying foxes

March 2012 heralded hard times for flying foxes when the Newman government came to power with a declared anti-flying fox policy. At that time Cairns Regional Council had a benevolent attitude towards the CBD spectacled flying fox camp, centred in the heritage listed trees at the Cairns library. The studies that supported the listing of this species as threatened cited the tourist value of this camp, that it was a significant camp with more than 10% of the total species population and that it provided shelter for adults and juveniles with a significant population of mothers and babies in the breeding season.

The Manning Council, elected soon after the Newman government, initially maintained the hands-off status quo but, when pressured by the Newman government to disperse the CBD bats, adopted an aggressive anti- flying fox policy.  

The facts that the spectacled flying fox is a listed threatened species under the Federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act and that the library fig trees are on the Queensland Heritage register should have dampened the vigour with which Council attacked the trees at the library. Unfortunately, for Council, it didn’t and they now find themselves in court for breaches of both the Nature Conservation Act 1992 and the Queensland Heritage Act.

Council decided not to pay the initial $14,000 fine and have now spent many times that amount in lawyers’ fees. All this wasted expenditure of ratepayers’ money on top of the costs of a failed dispersal has only fragmented this flying fox camp. They are now spread out over two city blocks from Shields to Florence Streets.

Bryn Mathews