ANIMAL welfare organisation Wildlife Aid has blamed the deaths of up to 1000 flying foxes in Singleton in last week’s heatwave on the felling of trees in the town’s main park.
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Volunteers are still removing dead bats from Burdekin Park, in the Singleton CBD, where they “cooked from the inside, out” as temperatures soared to 46 degrees on Saturday.
Many of the bats were found still gripping the trees as their lifeless bodies hang below.
“We’ve seen bats die after a heatwave before, but nothing like these figures,” Wildlife Aid bat coordinator Jaala Presland said.
“It wouldn’t be unreasonable to estimate 1000 bats have died, and they’re still dying – that’s a very big chunk considering the size of the camp before the heat.”
The influx of bats over more than a decade had all but destroyed most of the trees in the park, which was eventually shut to the public due to the danger of falling branches as well as other health and safety concerns before a council clean-up campaign.
Before Friday, Wildlife Aid estimated the size of the camp in Burdekin Park to be about 2000, which is down significantly on estimates of up to 30,000 bats that called the park home before dozens of badly damaged trees were removed last year.
Former mayor John Martin said the strategy was successful, as there was nowhere for the bats to roost, granting reprieve to residents who had been “tormented” by the colony for years.
However, Ms Presland said the removal of trees took away shade and a source of nutrition in the park, producing a nasty side effect on the endangered species.
“You can’t imagine what they would have went through,” she said.
“In the past, they would have climbed up into the canopies of the trees to cool down in the shade. Taking away their habitat may have moved some of them on, but most of the bats still in the park had nowhere to go and cooked from the inside, out.”
Cr Martin defended his council’s decision to remove the trees.
“It was done legally and legitimately,” he said. “The park was broken down and ruined, the situation was unbearable. My opinion was then, and still is now, we had to do something about it.”
There had not been any reports of deaths at other troublesome bat colonies in Cessnock and Maitland.
Elsewhere in the state, thousands of bats died in Casino in northern NSW.
Ms Presland said while it was common for a percentage of bats to die in hot weather, the weekend’s death toll was the worst since the first “heat stress event” in 2004, when 2500 bats died.
The weekend roasting killed a higher number of bats as a proportion of the total colony, and came after another 100 died in January.
Residents are being warned not to touch the bat carcasses, which can carry the deadly lyssavirus, instead urging they be reported.