maclean

The Maclean Rainforest Reserve was a beautiful place that soothed you, even on the hottest of summer days, with a cooling embrace and glimpses of an exciting extravaganza of the sights, sounds and smells of a tropical rainforest. Just a kilometre from the Pacific Highway, you were dwarfed by stately forest giants reaching for the sky and it was easy to imagine a time when lowland rainforest clothed the entire Clarence Valley. You could weep at the tragic loss of biodiversity that had been perpetrated during the early days of European settlement, or you could do as the Maclean community did look after the patch.

Figure 1: ". . . a Bicentennial grant in 1988 enabled installation of walkways and explanatory signs."

By 1961, when the High School was built, the community had come to realize how little of the once-vast scrubs remained, and how precious were the few surviving remnants. The Reserve was treated as an asset that could enhance the welfare of the community and the environment through education and perhaps, in time, ecotourism. The community tended the patch carefully, weeding and replanting with locally-collected seeds and a Bicentennial grant in 1988 enabled installation of walkways and explanatory signs. Believing that the patch was not big enough (1.1 ha) to support a flying-fox camp, the locals scared the animals away, historically with shotguns, but later with noise, that didn't harm the animals.

Others disagreed, saying that the patch was big enough to support flying-foxes and that scaring the animals away would cause them irreparable harm, perhaps even extinction, and that flying-foxes were essential to the survival of rainforests and must stay. Between 1989 and 1999 the community was forced, by legal and other means, to abandon their management practice and for a while the flying-foxes loved it. Because there was plenty of food in the bush nearby, animals began occupying the site throughout the year and the colony swelled from a few hundred to more than 50,000 animals. The roost trees lost their leaves, their branches were broken and they began , slowly but surely, to die. Weeds revelled in the renewed warmth of the sun and the Maclean Rainforest changed from a cool, leafy haven into a very dangerous place for flying-foxes to be. There was nowhere for many animals to roost and, had an extreme heat event (eg., Kyogle and Cabramatta in 1994), hit Maclean at this time, thousands would have perished from hyperthermia.

The community was immensely pleased that they were finally permitted to resume making scary noises in the Reserve on 6 April 1999. "It's music to my ears" one local said of the strange cacophony. But all who saw it were aghast and horrified at what remained of the once beautiful heritage rainforest a stark graveyard of dead trees, with broken limbs teetering precariously above a choking morass of weeds. Some of the corpses were tragically identified by plaques, placed lovingly years before. By the time the bats left, around 190 of the 200 trees that made up the patch needed to be cut to make it a safe place for people to walk and it will be more than 150 years before the damage recovers. The community was particularly angry because their wishes were shown to have been sidelined with misinformation. Many in the community ended up hating flying-fox "representatives", because most had steadfastly refused to acknowledge that bats had a down-side, even when it was clear that they did.

Figure 2 : A colony of a few hundred flying-foxes swelled to 50,000 ainmals.

Bat (and other wildlife) problems are not resolved by pretending that they do not exist and there is no chance of achieving a happy ending to the flying-fox story if the values of communities continue to be over-ridden, rough-shod, by protectionists touting misinformation. We need the people who live in the rural areas of this land on-side to get the flying-foxes and the rainforests back, because it is these people who occupy, and hence manage, the big patch of Australia known as off-reserve. Many encounter problems with wildlife (including flying-foxes) that can affect their health, wealth and welfare, but most so far have been studiously ignored, trivialized or held to ridicule by bat devotees. Not one has been seriously addressed in a cooperative fashion to make it a better world for flying-foes, forests and people.

Figure3: The remains of the researve are a stark reminder for the Maclean community.

I saw no distressed bats at Maclean, but I did see a community whose valid health, wealth and welfare concerns had been sidelined and I also saw a small, but significant, environmental disaster and immense waste of public monies and time, all of which could have been averted with factual dialogue. It is absolutely imperative for flying-fox conservation that the events of Maclean are never repeated, anywhere. 1.1 ha is far too small to support a flying-fox camp of any size, simply because small camps often become bigger, just as the locals said.

I sincerely hope that the tradition of "beating the bats" travels a very long way from Maclean because it demonstrates that flocks of flying-foxes can be trained to keep away from areas where they are not welcome. Management of orchards and other places like piggeries, schools and other very small patches of heritage trees would benefit from this simple technology, as would flying-foxes. Flying-foxes are very intelligent animals, but they seem unable to realize quickly enough when camp habitat is becoming fatally sub-optimal. If we encouraged flocks to visit small plantations of food trees in degraded areas, propagation of rainforests could be achieved though flying-fox seed dispersal, hence helping to create new habitat. Many flying-fox camp-sites (and foraging areas) have been lost because of human activities it is up to us to make new ones.

86% of Australia's human population live in urban areas and their views on conservation are sometimes imposed, willy-nilly, on the other 14% who occupy (and hence manage) most of the land. It is a primary responsibility of people who advise on flying-fox (or other wildlife) issues to ensure that their information is factual. Representatives of NGO's need to operate under similar rules that they expect their public servants and scientists to follow in other words they should be accountable for their actions and they should treat community values sympathetically. There is immense potential for community groups to simultaneously improve the conservation status of rainforests and flying-foxes, particularly in northern NSW and southern Qld, but it is most unlikely to happen if human rights are marginalized.