The Need for New Ideas and Innovations for the Ongoing Management of Tensions Between Humans and Flying‐fox Roosts

ABSTRACT Across the Old World, human‐wildlife conflicts arise from flying‐foxes roosting communally close to human settlements due to impacts on human communities from the animals' vocalisations, odour and faeces on amenity, exacerbated by general negative perceptions of bats. The current toolkit of management options available to land managers for these issues has four levels of intervention: starting with community engagement, then routine site maintenance, then creation of buffers and finally colony dispersal. However, all levels of intervention have limitations and in particular, colony dispersals are found to be largely ineffective in the long term and likely to expand the problem to new contentious sites. In certain situations, land managers may implement actions up to a certain level of intervention and find that the community angst is alleviated. However, in many situations, land managers may find themselves escalating to all possible interventions with community angst still not resolved. Considering this dilemma, we are appealing to everyone to contribute new ideas and innovations to enlarge the current toolkit of management options. In particular, ideas and innovations that could improve the lower levels of intervention are urgently sought to find solutions before situations reach the stage where the last resort of colony dispersal is considered.