A PETITION has been tabled in Queensland Parliament on the flying fox located colony the botanical gardens in Ingham.
Hinchinbrook MP, Andrew Cripps, tabled the document on behalf of 2858 petitioners and challenged Environment Minister Steven Miles to take action to resolve the issue.
Mr Cripps said the botanical gardens served as Ingham’s memorial gardens and was home to Ingham’s ANZAC cenotaph. There are also other memorials erected by the community in the Hinchinbrook Shire.
“For many years, the flying foxes that have periodically roosted in the botanical gardens in Ingham have been a noisy, smelly hindrance to the local community, but in the past, the flying foxes have come and gone - this time the colony has not moved on for an extended period,” Mr Cripps said.
“As such, the people of Ingham are no longer prepared to tolerate the impacts of this colony of flying foxes and they must be moved on and this petition requests the environment minister to direct his department to take the necessary steps to disperse this flying fox colony.”
Mr Cripps said the flying foxes had forced a local primary school to abandon its use of a bus pick–up and set-down area adjacent to the gardens and the colony was damaging the health of the trees in the gardens, in particular a stand of historic trees, by stripping vegetation off the branches.
“The environment minister has stated that local councils have a standing authority to manage flying fox roosts in urban areas, but on 4 November 2016, Hinchinbrook Shire Council officers were directed to cease certain management activities by officers from the Environment Department,” Mr Cripps said.
“The Environment Minister Steven Miles can’t say councils are responsible for this, only to have his department intervene to prevent them taking action, so we can only assume the minister and his department are prepared to assume full responsibility for managing this flying fox colony.”
Mr Cripps said the number of flying foxes in the colony occupying the Ingham botanical gardens were larger than in the past. It was unacceptable for the Environment Department to prevent the Hinchinbrook Shire Council from managing the roost under its established management plan, he said.
