Flying Fox Protection

This would seem to be one of the obvious ways to go, but netting is expensive and labor intensive. However, many orchardists seem to manage to protect their crops against not only the incursions of flying foxes, but also rainbow lorikeets. Most farmers object to the price of nets, and refuse to net their trees. There are also other problems with netting, because the trees cannot be allowed to grow too high. Current pruning techniques result in crop loss, often for several years, however, new techniques developed by Andre Leu, an organic (and bat friendly) lychee farmer, has eliminated this problem.

A Julatten lychee farm fully netted with throw-over nets. These nets are only used once a season and are removed from the tree when picking, and stored for the next season. Other types of nets are fixed on wires running above the orchard - these are more expensive, but less labor intensive to install each season.

The Austrop Foundation and Flying Fox Protection

Part of the reason for the construction of the new air-conditioned laboratory has been to allow the development of a very sophisticated non-lethal deterrent system, which is presently "radar" based, and which scans the airspace above the orchard, and plots the position of incoming bats (or birds, for that matter). If animals enter "defined air space", then harmless pyrotechnic flashes are directed at the incoming animals, rather than being haphazardly fired. In effect, it is the electronic equivalent of a farmer patrolling his orchard at night with a shotgun loaded with bird-scarer cartridges.

The basic detection system also has the ability to be used to assess other methods of orchard protection, as it can generate a space-time plot of the activity over the orchard for each night (or day). Some of the equipment for this project has been provided by Queensland National Parks, and an offer to fund the computer programming has been made by Andre Leu, a local organic rare fruit orchardist, and by AET of Sydney.

We are also developing non-lethal "Fyre Fox" systems, being aware that there are lots of these aerial electric fence systems erected in North Queensland exotic fruit orchards (primarily lychee and rambutan), and farmers loathe to abandon them. These are based on "demand driven" electric fence modules, which only generate a non-lethal pulse when a bat is detected hanging on the wires. We have been assisted by Gallagher Australia, in Melbourne, who has provided materials for us to use for development.

Bat censoring equipment based on using a laser detection system is also being developed.

We'd welcome an electronics enthusiast who'd like to spend some time working on these techniques!

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