With wingspans of up to one-metre, protected grey-headed flying foxes are causing multiple blackouts a week
Australia’s largest bat is making life difficult for Adelaide residents with a heaving colony of more than 25,000 plunging households into darkness 40 times so far this year.
The protected grey-headed flying fox – a member of the megabat family – first moved into Botanic Park in the heart of the city in 2010.
Since then the colony has grown steadily and it has often hit about 25,000 but there’s something a little different about the situation this year and it’s playing havoc with the power network.
Adelaide didn’t get its usual heatwaves this summer, meaning vastly more pups than usual survived. It’s these naive young bats, still on their L-plates when it comes to flying, that seem to be causing much of the trouble, an expert said.
“These young bats are leaving the colony on their first foraging runs, and they’re getting into strife on the power line infrastructure,” said Jason van Weenan, an ecologist with the South Australian government’s Green Adelaide program.
“It’s particularly noticeable this year because not only do we have a large colony at the moment (at the upper end of its historical range), but we also have a lot of young surviving so that’s unusual.”
