Sustainable Management of the Grey-headed Flying-fox Pteropus poliocephalus

Abstract

The Grey-headed Flying-fox Pteropus poliocephalus is a large (to 1000 g) bat, endemic to coastal, south-eastern Australia (Queensland, NSW, Victoria). Sustainable management of P. poliocephalus, recently listed at State and Federal level as Vulnerable, must ensure its conservation in perpetuity -and costeffective and environmentally and socially acceptable ways of minimising conflicts with people in rural and urban contexts. Exclusion netting can achieve this in some, although not all, orchard situations but is usually inappropriate for managing camp occupation. There is a need for the development of approaches, other than netting, to suit a variety of problem situations. Attainment of this goal has been constrained by factionalisation of stakeholders at community and government levels, inadequate resourcing and ineffective evaluation and communication. Little attention has been directed toward the apparent ability of flying-foxes to learn -and, hence, the possibility of training flocks to avoid certain areas. Potential effects could be long-lasting given the P. poliocephalus life-span of at least 13 years. Adequate funding, coupled with effective communication across communities and governments, could enable development and uptake of much-needed, best-practice flyingfox management through participatory trials and rigorous and transparent monitoring.

Climate change and the effects of temperature extremes on Australian flying-foxes

“…Northern Rivers area, 2002;Ipswich, 1994 and1999; table 3), P. alecto suffered substantially higher mortality than P. poliocephalus (this paper; N. Markus & L. Hall 2000, unpublished data), again suggesting that P. alecto is more sensitive to high temperatures than P. poliocephalus. Pteropus alecto's Australian distribution is in tropical coastal regions (figure 2) where temperature extremes are less severe than within the more temperate coastal range of P. poliocephalus (e.g.…”

The Conflict Between Pteropodid Bats and Fruit Growers: Species, Legislation and Mitigation

“…These findings can be used as a compelling argument in mitigating conflict with orchardists (Del Vaglio et al 2011) and to prevent deliberate killing of bats for crop protection. However, examples from Australia, Fiji, India, Japan and Malaysia show that depletion of food resources due to habitat loss can drive flying foxes to feed in fruit orchards (Gumal et al 1998;Verghese 1998;Tidemann 1999;Nakamoto et al 2007;Luskin 2010). Any mitigation efforts therefore must ensure that wild food sources continue to be maintained in the long term, and where these have been depleted, tree-planting must be carried out to replenish the loss.…”

“…The unpopularity of these species must thus be overcome in order to attract appropriate research funding. Australian orchardists maintain that it is the government's responsibility, not theirs, to fund the research (Bicknell 2002) because they believe it was not orchards which caused the habitat loss driving this problem (Tidemann 1999). Bicknell (2002) pointed out that orchards provide flying foxes with food when wild resources are scarce.…”

Drought-driven change in wildlife distribution and numbers: a case study of koalas in south west Queensland

“…The ability of species to adapt to climate change will depend on several factors, including: (i) dispersal ability; (ii) phenotypic plasticity; (iii) evolutionary adaptability; and (iv) physiological tolerance (Williams et al 2008). Range shifts in response to higher temperatures have been seen in several species, generally either polewards or to higher elevations (Tidemann 1999;Hughes 2003;Thomas et al 2006;Thuiller et al 2008;Gibson et al 2009;Thomas 2010). Some species are showing signs of physiological adaptation to climate change, either through phenotypic plasticity or behavioural change (Parmesan 2006;Fuller et al 2010).…”