Friends of the
Flying Foxes (FFF) said bats needed a 200-meter buffer zone from their roosting site so human activity and loud noises would not disturb their sleeping and mating patterns, according to a letter that the group sent to the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force, Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu and the Malay municipal government in Aklan province.
"The demarcated critical habitat is mainly in Barangays Balabag and Yapak, where the
flying foxes are concentrated," Atienza said.
The giant golden-crowned
flying fox typically dwells deep in forest caves, however, which makes this sighting so spectacular.
On the ropes Kaiya takes off on the
Flying Fox zipwire.
'Everything in the park is covered in
flying fox faeces and you worry about getting urinated on,' Kim Gott, another resident, said.
Caption: Stefan Tcherepnin, Glam
Flying Fox, 2017, faux fur, synthetic leather.
Microbial analysis shows that Indian
flying fox ejecta are an amalgam of beneficial and pathogenic microbes and its pH (6.7 to 7.4), high concentration of phosphorus (4.50% and 4.33%) and nitrogen (3.26% and 2.37%) favor seed germination, enhance root growth and soil fertility.
With government approval, people for decades shot, poisoned, gassed, burnt, and electrocuted
flying foxes. In the 1990s there were estimates of 100,000 or more grey-headed
flying foxes being shot annually (Tidemann et al, "Grey-headed
Flying Fox").
There is no way of knowing the
flying fox population figures prior to British settlement of Australia, but certainly the numbers would have been in the thousands of millions.