Queensland Conservation urges community and political leaders to ensure the safety of people, horses and flying foxes by taking a calm and evidence based approach.

The culling or dispersal of flying foxes will have little or no effect on the transmission of Hendra virus to horses - and may make matters worse. Just as humans become more susceptible to infection when they are stressed, so flying foxes are likely to have higher virus loads when stressed by harassment or destruction of their feeding and roost sites.

Attempting to ‘move on’ flying-foxes will just move the problem somewhere else - they can fly up to 100km in a night - and their camps are only semi-permanent. It seems illogical and costly to disperse their roost sites when the flying-foxes may pack up and move tomorrow and yet return in a few weeks time.

The only sensible way to reduce the risk of transmission is to manage horses – to stop them coming in contact with the virus and to stop them passing the virus to humans. The Biosecurity Queensland webpage  has all the information you need to stay safe.

Flying foxes are long distance pollinators, vital to the health of our increasingly fragmented forests. During their flights, they drop seed and disperse pollen, fertilising flowers over great distances. Culling an animal so vital to the ecological processes that underlie the health of our environment, and therefore us,  for a negligible benefit when there are simpler and more effective ways to protect people and horses from Hendra makes no sense.

Download the factsheet here   Flying_Fox_Hendra_Facts 1.50 Mb