Moving Sydney's Bats

Sydney wants to move its bats. Over the years, Grey-Headed Flying Foxes (or, as we may prefer to call them, "big bats") have been roosting in Sydney's Botanical Gardens for a very long time. Since the eighties, they've gone from commuting in at night to hunt to setting up second homes up in the trees. We're talking over 22,000 flying foxes.

Now, Sydney wants to move the bats in order to protect the Botanical Gardens' rare and sensitive trees. The proposed method of bat-relocation is sound disruption, which apparently worked in Melbourne. Glad I found out now, since I was going to look for Melbourne's flying foxes next week. That should save me some time.

This bat-moving business is a big job, so I'm wondering if there's a crowdsourcing opportunity here. If offered a free Flying Fox Relocation Specialist t-shirt, I bet visitors would be willing to spend half an hour yelling at the bats. I'd do it.

The attached photo depicts the type of bat in question. They were quite still during the day, since it was pretty warm.