Transcription Audio

Hello and welcome. Come with me to a hot Darwin afternoon in the build‑up, October 2023. I’m hosing bat guano off my boots behind a community hall when the principal leans in and whispers, “They want them gone by Friday.” She means the black flying‑foxes roosting in the paperbarks along the creek. An hour later my phone buzzes—Mick, a grazier outside Katherine: “Calves on the ground and dingoes nosing the fence. I’m not losing another one this week, mate.” That’s my world as a human–wildlife interaction specialist: two communities, two kinds of fear, one question—how do we reduce conflict safely and ethically? It’s not just a Top End story. Across Australia, reported human–wildlife conflicts rose about 15 percent from 2020 to 2023. The Australian Wildlife Management Society noted a 23 percent rise in urban bat conflicts in the north. Darwin had 18 percent more extreme heat days in 2023 than the previous decade’s average. People and wildlife were running on empty. Here’s the backbone I wish every community had: roughly 80 percent of conflicts come down to three things—unsecured food sources, inadequate barriers, and poor timing of human activities. I call them the three A’s: Attractants, Access, and Attitudes. Map those patterns and you can fix most problems without touching the animals. I asked the school for 48 hours. Under a patchy shade sail, kids ran cross‑country while a dozen flying‑foxes stirred overhead like dark leaves. Parents worried about disease, mess, smell, and the prep classroom right there. The room leaned toward the quick fix: move the bats. Here’s the hard truth, shared gently: you can’t just shoo a maternity roost. In the NT it’s illegal without a permit, it’s unethical, and October–November is peak birthing for black flying‑foxes. Dispersals rarely work long‑term. Research shows higher stress and disease risk in dispersed colonies, and fragments tend to pop up in shopping centres, backyard trees, and school ovals. It doesn’t solve the problem; it multiplies it. “So what’s the plan?” the principal asked. The boring, effective answer: waste management, timing, and buffers. Nudge, don’t shove. Environmental tweaks are several times more effective than relocation for long‑term results. That afternoon I headed south to Mick’s. Paddocks silver with grass, dogs on the fenceline. He pointed at a gully. “Calves drop at night. Something’s working that fence‑line.” Tracks were classic dingo—slender, direct. We talked options: temporary turbo‑fladry on hotspots, fast carcass removal, extra night checks during peak calving, move calving mobs closer to the house block, and a proper electric offset wire with the vegetation cleared so it actually bites. “No poison,” I said. “They’re native, and you’ll create problems you don’t want.” He nodded. “If it works, I’ll cop the extra rounds.” Urban folks often miss this: producers aren’t anti‑wildlife. They’re balancing ecology and economics. A single calf is months of investment. The messy middle is where the work lives. After a couple hundred callouts across the Top End, the same patterns show up: unsecured waste, unsecured attractants—fruit, feed, water—and unmanaged expectations. Studies back it up: fragmentation and human food sources drive encounters; small, consistent changes reduce them without harm. And remember, you’re not just removing temptations—you’re rewiring behavior. Flying‑foxes have excellent spatial memory. Even after you secure attractants, they’ll keep checking a site for a while. That extinction period can take weeks or months. Patience is part of the plan. At the school, we made it tangible. First, waste. Lockable, tight‑lidded bins went indoors or into a caged area about thirty metres from the roost. Compost moved off‑site for a bit. The groundskeeper rolled his eyes, then admitted the “bin birds”—ibises and crows—stopped visiting, and with fewer noisy scavengers under the trees, the bats stayed calmer and higher in the canopy. Second, timing. We shifted P.E. and assemblies away from dawn and dusk—the bat commute. Staff stopped rolling trolleys and dragging bins under the roost first thing in the morning. Deliveries came midday. That single change reduced noise during critical flight windows and cut those “drop‑and‑dash” guano episodes over playtimes. Third, buffers and behavior. We created a quiet zone under the paperbarks with temporary fencing and shade cloth so kids weren’t hanging out right below the roost. We installed a covered walkway between the most affected classrooms—parents instantly felt better about prams and uniforms. We put up friendly signs about not disturbing roosts and washing hands. Longer term, we planned selective pruning outside maternity season, with permits, to keep roosting higher and away from school infrastructure. With the heat, we prepped for bat heat‑stress days by identifying alternative shady rest areas away from footpaths, rather than letting animals collapse onto busy grounds. Some things didn’t work. A cheap ultrasonic gadget—bats ignored it, kids complained. A bright spotlight under the roost? It just moved the bats sideways and annoyed neighbors. What stuck were the habits: bin management, timetable tweaks, quiet buffers, covered paths, and clear communication about what to expect over the next few weeks. For Mick, the plan was equally practical. We ran turbo‑fladry on the gully line for three weeks—just long enough to disrupt the pattern while calves found their legs. He tightened the carcass protocol: any dead stock out within 12 hours, because carcasses draw a crowd you don’t want at calving time. He shifted the heaviest calving mobs closer to the house block and water points with good visibility. The electric offset went live and stayed live; he kept the grass off it so it didn’t short. We added two foxlights and rotated them weekly so dingoes didn’t habituate. Guardian animals stayed on the table for later—with the right training and paddock design. The payoff? Two weeks into the school plan, complaint calls halved. The roost stayed, but the friction dropped. By the end of term, routes were covered, assemblies rescheduled, and the “we need them gone by Friday” energy softened into “this is manageable.” At Mick’s, he lost one calf that season, down from five the year before. He still saw dingo tracks, but the pattern changed—they skirted the hot zones and shifted to scavenging wallaby carcasses away from the house block. That’s coexistence. Not a fairy tale. Just fewer losses, less stress, better boundaries. If you’re thinking, “What do I do where I live?” here’s a quick field kit you can adapt anywhere in Australia—bats over a school, possums in the roof, dingoes on the back paddock: - Map hotspots and times. Where, when, what species? Track it for two weeks. Patterns beat hunches. - Remove attractants. Secure bins, move them away from vegetation, pick fruit promptly with wildlife‑safe netting, bring pet and chook feed in at night, fix dripping taps, manage open water. - Fix access. Fences and offset wires, grates, sealing roof gaps, pruning ladder branches away from eaves, and simple line‑of‑sight barriers like shade cloth to nudge activity away from high‑use areas. - Adjust timing. Avoid noisy work at dawn and dusk. Shift events and deliveries to midday. Align calving, lambing, or harvest with your best capacity for monitoring and barriers. - Communicate early. Pick one spokesperson. Explain what’s changing and why, and set a timeframe. Uncertainty fuels outrage; information calms it. - Know the law and welfare windows. Check your state or territory rules before touching wildlife or roost trees, especially during maternity seasons. Don’t handle bats—call trained, vaccinated carers through your local wildlife group or council. - Manage food risks fast. Dead stock out quickly. Pick up fallen fruit. Clean up after events. Keep parks tidy around roosts. - Rotate deterrents. If you use lights, fladry, sound, or sprinklers, rotate location and timing so animals don’t habituate. Keep the pressure light but unpredictable. - Design for coexistence. Plant attractive species away from play spaces and buildings. Create alternative habitat a bit further from conflict zones—taller canopy near waterways can hold a bat roost away from classrooms. Plan paths and shade with wildlife overhead in mind. - Monitor and adapt. Keep a simple log of incidents, complaints, and fixes. Use a couple of trail cams if you can. Review monthly. Small, consistent tweaks beat big one‑offs. Here’s the mindset piece: conflict isn’t proof wildlife is the problem. It’s a sign that patterns are colliding. When we tweak those patterns—take away the easy food, block the obvious path, shift our noisy moments—most animals take the hint. It’s not glamorous, but it works. I still think about that day at the school, heat shimmering over the oval, bats rustling like dark origami in the paperbarks. We didn’t move them by Friday. We moved the bins, the timetables, and the people pressure. And that was enough. And I think about Mick, headlights sweeping a fenceline at two in the morning, choosing extra work over poison because the landscape is a long game and shortcuts bite back. If your community’s in the thick of it, start with one change this week—secure the waste or shift the timing. If you hit a wall, bring in help early, talk to your council, loop in local wildlife carers. When the next heatwave rolls through, remember: stressed wildlife makes bad neighbors—give them space, skip the loud disturbances, protect your shade corridors. Coexistence isn’t a truce you sign once. It’s maintenance. The boring stuff, done well, for as long as it takes, so people can get on with their lives and wildlife can get on with being wildlife. In a warming, busier Australia, that might be the most hopeful work we can do.