Found in every Australian city, there’s more to bats than it first appears.
Contrary to their horror-film reputation, bats play a critical role in maintaining forest biodiversity.
Australia’s flying-foxes generate new life by spreading pollen from tree to tree, particularly important following a summer of bushfires.
President of the Melbourne Bat and Bushcare group Lawrence Pope told The Feed it’s a role they’ve been playing for two-million years.
“They really are ancient Australians who deserve our great respect,” Mr Pope said.
Ninety-five percent of Australia’s fruit bats have died-out over the past century.
“We've lost many, many tens of thousands through starvation, we lose many tens of thousands every year through heat exhaustion, through heat stroke, and we lose them through direct loss of their camp through urban sprawl,” Mr Pope said.
Mr Pope has been caring for the Yarra Bend bat colony, in suburban Melbourne, since it was forcibly relocated from the Royal Botanic Gardens 17 years ago.
Now, the flying-fox colony is facing a new threat from frightened locals.
“They want the bats gone, now whether that’s drastic action, like a cull, or simply moving the bats on, that's a matter for authorities,” Kew MP Tim Smith told Nine News.
From the outset of this pandemic, bats have been widely blamed as the source of Covid-19.
Mr Pope is concerned calls for culling are driven by an irrational fear of bats fuelled by the pandemic.
“Covid-19 isn't found in Australian bats or Australian wildlife. There have been some fears that Australian bats may carry it, by members of the public, that's not the case.”
Director of Health and Biosecurity at CSIRO, Dr Rob Grenfell, told The Feed coronaviruses are not spread directly from bats to humans.
“Bats themselves don't inherently pose a disease risk directly to humans because all of these viruses…have to go through an intermediary animal before they actually are a threat to humans,” Dr Grenfell said.
Dr Grenfell leads a team of researchers working to find a vaccine for Covid-19.
He believes the bat’s immune system could hold the cure for some cancers and viruses of pandemic proportions.
“We do need to look in wonder at these little animals, with super powers for their immune system, and ask ourselves; what can we learn from that rather than just destroying bats?”
”Most definitely there are cures in there for some of these viruses.”
Dr Grenfell’s team at the CSIRO animal health laboratory in Geelong has been researching bat immunology for more than a decade and has come under scrutiny for its collaboration with Chinese scientists accused, by some, of leaking the coronavirus from a lab in Wuhan.
Both Australian and US intelligence officials, along with the scientific community, say they’re yet to find any evidence to support the theory.
Dr Grenfell says the CSIRO’s research into bat viruses, including that done by visiting Chinese scientists, has fast-tracked the process of finding a vaccine for Covid-19.
“This has allowed us to start the race to try to solve the problem of Covid-19 at a much more advanced stage, so that research itself was vital for the responses that we're actually taking now.”
Dr Grenfell says a vaccine could be made available as early as the end of the year.
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