The follow-up to the successful 2016 forum was recently held in Sydney on Wednesday 25th October. Ecosure once again played a pivotal role in the development of the program and organising speakers for 2017 event, continuing our involvement from the 2016 forum.
This years’ event attracted around 100 delegates to a day of thought provoking research updates, state updates and two workshops – one on developing a guideline for managing Heat Stress Events (HSE) for flying-fox camps and the other being a structure research gap analysis. The forum also provided an update on the National Flying-fox Strategic Vision and delegates were asked to contribute to the implementation of the strategic vision over the next 12 months.
The forum brought together representatives from:
- 21 local governments and LG associations
- 6 Universities
- NSW Office of Environment and Heritage
- NSW Department of Primary Industries
- NSW Department of Transport
- Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection
- Queensland Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation
- Queensland Herbarium
- Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Energy
- Commonwealth Department of Agriculture and Water Resources
- CSIRO
- Bat conservation and wildlife carer groups
- Ecological consultants.
An important output of the forum will be an HSE Guideline that will have the ambitious target of a draft document ready for the 2017/18 summer season. HSE occur during heatwave conditions and flying-foxes become unable to regulate their body temperatures, eventually leading to death. Forum participates were keen to provide their knowledge of historical events and to share strategies that could be included in a draft guideline.
The National Flying-fox Forum was held in partnership with the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand (EIANZ). Please visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/nationalflyingfoxforum/ or give us a call to stay up to date for the 2018 forum!