Flying fox lament

People do not like me
They hate my noise and smell
And many batty orchardists
Wish I was in hell

Some may think me vermin
And a vector for disease
But I really am quite useful
As I pollinate the trees

I'm intelligent and sociable
And pretty as can be
And turning sunset sky to black
Is marvellous to see

Few creatures are as unfairly maligned as the flying fox.  In a country awash with ferals it is a great irony that a protected and ecologically important native animal is the brunt of so much hatred and hysteria.  The media has a lot to answer for by deliberately stirring up controversy and giving air time to the profoundly ignorant. And then the politicians get involved and it is a free for all. The one group no one listens to are the scientific experts.  If the experts state that you won’t catch Hendra Virus from a from a flying fox you will be sure to see an opinion piece by someone with no credentials  shrilly denouncing the flying fox as a danger to public health. The current trend of opinion taking precedence over science in a host of areas including climate change, ecology and even medicine and sociology is extremely worrying. We are headed back to the dark ages when a Galileo could be imprisoned for daring to suggest that the earth travelled around the sun.

Yes, flying foxes are noisy and messy but few ask the right question of why they are establishing colonies in towns. They falsely assume that the population is too high and demand that they be culled when the real reason for their presence is that their habitat is vanishing and they are looking for food and a place to live.   Far from being overpopulated the flying foxes are in decline despite their increasing presence in towns. And yes they will maraud fruit crops but many species of flying foxes are primarily nectar feeders and they are important pollinators. They are intelligent and  sociable and the sight of them taking to the sky in their hundreds at dusk is magnificent.  I’ll bat for the flying fox any day.