Re your article Flying foxes driving Mullumbimby residents batty, I congratulate Lisa Sandstrom and her group for focusing on vegetation management and not relocation, which always involves fatalities.
Bats are our critically important forest regenerators and without them we would have no hardwood forests, no banksias, melaleucas and about 30 per cent of our fruit. Thank goodness for flying foxes! Personally I love them including their aroma and rejoice that we live in a time and place where they still exist.
At the rate we are deforesting the land we will drive them to extinction in time – so here’s to doing all we can to protect them while also looking after reasonable needs of humans. After all, they are the natives and we have invaded their land .
I just hope that people become sufficiently educated about the ecosystem services that bats provide to appreciate them and stop vilifying them for being ‘noisy and stinky’, when we humans certainly are far worse!
Menkit Prince, Uki
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
