Lissner Park in Charters Towers is home to a colony of Little Red flying foxes and Black flying foxes. This colony is in the middle of its breeding season, with many small pups still dependent on their mothers and unable to fly. Yet Charters Towers Council is about to use a barrage of cruel harassment methods to force these gentle native animals to move — with potentially deadly consequences for the babies. The harassment techniques are strong enough to break small bodies and bones, and cause severe injury and death. Read enough? Use the form below to demand a fair go for flying foxes! Or click here to read the full details before taking action » Mustering helicopters, water cannons, gas bombs, sirens and fog machines are all allowed as part of this dispersal — harassment permitted through the granting of a Queensland Department of Environment ‘Damage Mitigation Permit’. This chaotic disruption will not only cause an unacceptable amount of stress to the flying foxes, but will put the pups in the colony at significant risk. Flying fox pups will be separated from their mothers, and if mothers do return for their pups, the stress of the dispersal will likely cause their milk to dry up and their pups to be left to starve. State wildlife management regulations and legislation require that any method of moving the flying foxes must be humane — but provide no definition of what humane actually means for animals. There is also no evidence to suggest that the harassment techniques planned are likely to have any lasting effect in moving the colony away. animalsaustralia.org/take_action/flying-foxes-queensland/
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 04:45:40 +0000