Cessnock Council says it is closely monitoring the flying fox colony at East Cessnock

Anecdotal evidence, from residents posting on social media suggests that the flying foxes have been arriving from the flying fox camp at East Cessnock nightly, heading west.

However, Cessnock Council’s Director of environment and planning, Gareth Curtis said that at this stage, the number of flying foxes in the area is not necessarily a concern.

“Numbers at the camp will vary – they go up and down quite often and sometimes it’s a different species of flying fox that causes more problems than the threatened one,” Mr Curtis said.

He added that council had yet to field any concerns from residents who live nearby the camp and that council had received advice that the numbers are actually reducing.

“Usually, people are very quick to tell us if there is a problem, so they might have returned but they may not necessarily be causing an issue at this time,” Mr Curtis said. “The residents in that area are quite sensitive to it and if it does begin to present an issue, I am sure they will be contacting us.”

Mr Curtis said that influxes of flying foxes to such colonies as East Cessnock were not unusual, and that the current heat may be a driving factor.

“These flying foxes, particularly the grey headed flying fox which is the threatened one, are particularly susceptible to very very hot weather so they move around,” he said.

“It’s a nationally significant camp there at East Cessnock and they all know where these camps are throughout their flying range, so the bats could be coming from anywhere.”

In February last year, Cessnock Council secured a $50,000 grant from Local Government NSW to implement strategies outlined in council’s East Cessnock Flying Fox Camp Management Plan which was adopted in September 2017.

The funding was matched with $50,000 of in-kind staff support, effectively making it a $100,000 project while residents were able to apply for grants to subsidise the purchase of car, pool and clothesline covers and high pressure hoses.

Mr Curtis said that council was continuing to look at potential funding streams to further facilitate the management plan.

“We are constantly looking for grants and we’ve got to wait until governments go through that process whereby they release money for certain programs so we can implement the rest of the camp management plan,” Mr Curtis said.

“The most recent things we have done are some vegetation pruning work, some buffer zone clearing and we pit some trees on the Cessnock Road side because some of the residents were saying that because of the removal of buffer vegetation, they were getting the noise from the road.

“We also funded a subsidy program through the grants and we’ve done a survey of residents and my understanding is that we are currently collating the results from that now.”

The bats have come and gone in droves over the past seven years – peaking at an estimated 47,000 bats in May 2016.

A few thousand grey-headed flying foxes returned to the East Cessnock site during mating season in March and April last year.