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    STEP Matters 184

    Hard Times for Flying-foxes in Sydney

    Grey-headed flying-foxes are listed as a threatened species and play a crucial role in the pollination of Eucalyptus trees on the east coast. Unlike many birds that have a small range flying-foxes fly long distances and can enhance species resilience by widening the gene pool. Like the calls made by some people for sharks to be removed from our coasts, it seems that people will not accept that bats are a natural part of our environment. A little inconvenience is deemed to be unacceptable.

    It’s not a good time to be a flying-fox who calls Sydney home. This year, dispersals have been carried out at the camps in Avalon and Kareela. Dispersal is threatened at Balgowlah. In addition, the Parramatta Park camp is under threat.

    To make matters worse, dispersals have been approved (and carried out) at times of the year considered harmful to the animals – contravening the Office of Environment and Heritage’s (OEH) best-practice guidelines.

    Cannes Reserve, Avalon

    The camp at Cannes Reserve, Avalon, was dispersed at the end of July. However this coincided with the normal reduction in numbers of flying-foxes in the Sydney region – the Gordon camp was deserted soon after – so it’s debateable how much was directly due to the dispersal activities and how much to normal seasonal movement. However, in October the bats returned – as has been seen in nearly every other dispersal attempt.

    Pittwater Council then carried out ‘maintenance dispersals’ – which in operation are identical to dispersals, but allowed to be conducted at times when a normal dispersal is prohibited due to the stress on the animals and threat to pregnancies. Under pressure from a handful of local residents, Pittwater Council conducted dispersals even when dependent young were present in the camp – with the full approval of OEH. And in early November, Council conducted tree trimming at night, after the bats had flown out. This resulted in the severe pruning of 12 trees used as roost trees by mothers with young, and the effective destruction of the contiguous canopy in the camp. (The vegetation type is a declared Endangered Ecological Community – Pittwater Littoral Rainforest.)
     
    The short-term result was that the flying-foxes moved into other trees, closer to the residents who had complained. How this situation can be resolved is unclear. At present it appears that the cycle will stop only when there is nothing left of the reserve, and the bats have moved somewhere else.

    The next closest camp, at Warriewood, has been abandoned for months due to adjacent construction work; the next two nearest camps are Balgowlah – itself contentious and being proposed for dispersal; and Gordon.

    Kareela, Sutherland Shire

    At the same time, at Kareela in Sutherland Shire, a long battle with residents resulted in Sutherland Shire Council approving for full dispersal of that camp. This camp was only established after another camp – Kurnell – was abandoned during construction of the adjacent Sydney desalination plant. The Kareela dispersal was not approved in time for action to take place under the OEH guidelines (May to July) which are supposedly in place to minimise harm to the animals, so were approved to start in August.

    The animals were quickly dispersed from the camp but moved to adjacent areas of bushland; they were then in turn dispersed from these. Eventually, the animals abandoned the area; it’s not known where they have gone, but it’s thought to be Wolli Creek. They have, of course, continued to try roosting in the Kareela camp. So Council staff have been conducting pre-dawn dispersals to prevent the camp re-establishing.

    Like the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens, they accept that this will be an ongoing action – probably for some years. The approved budget for this is $800,000 to $1.2 million.

    Parramatta Park

    The Parramatta Park camp is an interesting case – the camp is supported by both the local council and the managing body (Western Sydney Parks Trust). However a major development is planned for the area adjacent to the camp. This has been declared a State Significant Development so is out of the hands of local bodies, and proposes multi-storey apartment blocks sited just 50 m from the camp.

    Out of Sydney

    Further afield, there’s talk of dispersing the camps at North Avoca, on the Central Coast; and at Rudder Park, Kempsey (a camp that formed after a previous camp was itself dispersed by construction of the Kempsey bypass). There’s also a draft plan of management for the camp in Batemans Bay (which thankfully proposes in situ management rather than dispersal).

    It seems that NSW is following the direction of Queensland regarding flying-fox management: hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money being used on what are ultimately ineffective and pointless actions which at best only result in the problem being moved somewhere else – usually worse. Ironically, Queensland councils are now starting to realise this and are in some cases pushing back against resident complaints and trying to manage the issues rather than taking the knee-jerk action of dispersal. Sadly, many NSW councils do not seem to be getting the message.

    Ultimately, however, what needs to change is community attitudes towards wildlife and nature – and the recognition that humans are part of the environment, instead of above it.

    Out thanks to the Ku-ring-gai Bat Conservation Society for permission to publish this article that was originally published in Friends of Bats newsletter in December 2015. It is written by Tim Pearson, a wildlife ecologist who is researching flying-fox communication for his PhD at Macquarie University.

    Late Spring in the Snowies

    Two members of the STEP committee visited the Snowy Mountains in recent months. John Martyn saw plenty of flowers in late-spring but my experience in mid-January was that most of the flowering had finished. Traditionally January and February have been peak season for flowers. More evidence of climate change? John’s perspective on his visit follows.

    The Snowy Mountains have a lot going for them in all seasons, though the visitor bias is strongly towards the winter ski season or to hiking and wildflowers in midsummer. But what about the transitional seasons?

    A couple of years ago we went down there in mid-February to see and photograph Mueller’s snow gentians in flower: always late bloomers. And it sure was worth it! They are truly beautiful and of course endemic to the Australian Alps. But what about spring?

    Spring Flowers and Snowpatch Flowers

    What happens after the snow gradually melts and retreats to just the major drifts? Well, if you go down there in late-October to December, you'll see, if you're lucky, some of the snowpatch flowers.

    Classic, and among the most beautiful of these, are the alpine marsh marigolds Psychrophila introloba (formerly Caltha introloba) whose flowers can actually open beneath the snow. Their quite large five-petalled white flowers, tinged yellow and sometimes streaked with purple, nestle among the tufts of their bright-green leaves in the soggy grasses watered by the snowmelt. We saw and photographed them on the edges of a melting snowpatch on the slopes of Mt Stilwell – easily reached via a walking track from the turnaround at Charlotte Pass.

    Ranunculus anemoneusBut the queen of the spring flowers is surely the anemone buttercup Ranunculus anemoneus. This is not strictly a snowpatch flower and we saw it scattered across a variety of grassy and heathy settings, and it's quite common near Kosciuszko Road along the last half kilometre to Charlotte Pass. As far as spotting them goes, however, it's fortunate that they flower before the main blooming season of the much more abundant Celmisia daisies, which display white flowers of similar size and colour.

    The two flowers highlighted so far are both members of the buttercup family Ranunculaceae, and this family dominates alpine spring flowering. There are yellow buttercups of a number of species, scattered widely through the grasses and herbfields, or nestling in clumps. Snow buttercups Ranunculous niphophilus flourish and bloom actually in the meltwater of snowpatches. To us ex-Poms, the country above the tree line is strongly reminiscent of certain moorlands in Britain, especially Dartmoor with its granite tors, and to see buttercups everywhere in Kosciuszko reinforces this feeling. But let's tell you about another alpine gem and wonder.

    Alpine Crayfish

    It can be a bleak and challenging environment up there and we never seem to see a great variety of bird and animal life, so we were astonished to find crayfish claws and shells near the Mt Stilwell snowpatch at around 1950 m asl. The soggy turf and sphagnum with its trickling rivulets was peppered with holes, clearly made by these hardy creatures who must surely hibernate beneath the snow.

    We never saw a live one in two visits in different seasons, but scouring the web turned up the likely candidate as a species of the genus Euastacus or spiny crayfish, of which there are 50, all endemic to SE Australia with 17 of them on the IUCN Red List.

    The most probable one is Euastacus rieki as this species is recorded at the highest altitudes and is known to make burrows (not all of them do). However, its IUCN Red List entry quotes the highest recorded altitude as 1520 m and we found it at 1950 m – which is well worth exploring and investigating further.

    Implications and Worries

    All Euastacus species apparently require permanent water to survive, and this is traditionally available at Kosciuszko from snowmelt and from summer rainfall. Reductions in snowfall and progressively earlier snowmelts due to climate change must be considered a threat to these unique little animals.