The “bats” (grey-headed flying foxes/pteropus poliocephalus) are clean, healthy animals that pollinate and disperse the seeds of over 100 species of native trees.

They create and maintain forests wherever they go. They’ve been doing this job for two million years. What is our ecological role?

Australian Bat Lyssavirus (ABLV) is rare and the only disease an infected bat can transmit directly to humans. No person who has ever been bitten by an infected bat and who has then had the post-exposure vaccine has died.

The total human death toll from lyssavirus in Australia from flying foxes is three people in 100 years - so much, much less than lightning or falling from ladders.

People need to understand the struggle of these animals to survive in a land that we have devastated. Their diet is nectar, pollen and fruit. They work like bees and so the bats need flowering and fruiting native trees.

Millions starved in the 1990s because of land-clearing. If you want healthy (not inbred) trees and forests and water and air then keep your pollinators healthy – birds, bats, bees.

We have lost around 98 per cent of this species since 1900. They have only one pup per year and a high mortality rate.

The person who wanted to shoot them makes my blood boil and I ask if they don’t like Australian animals, in Australian trees, in Australia they should leave and good riddance.

We just don’t have the time left to try to manage the deep ignorance they embody. We are struggling to protect these and other native species and we are, generally speaking, losing.