Скачать или смотреть nightly flyout - spectacled flying fox

Copyright Alexandra Jones, all rights reserved. Every evening the spectacled flying foxes leave their day time roost trees to fly out into the rainforests of the wet tropics to pollinate and disperse seeds of rainforest plants. Just before dawn the spectacled flying foxes return to their camp to sleep and rest. Without them, the rainforests of the wet tropical parts of Australia are poorer in health and biodiversity. I was stunned to discover that this species has lost 30% of its Australian population in a hot weather event/heat stress event over a 3 day period, a few years ago. They were already classified as endangered (because humans have taken the forests they live in and the forests where they feed and cleared them for agribusiness and houses and other developments) now their situation is critical. This makes this colony at the Cairns City Library exceptionally important not just because it is a colony of this species but also because it is a maternity colony. So I was doubly shocked to discover that the colony was being relocated, I have been told it has existed at this library location (the adjacent fig trees) since the 1950's. They are called spectacled flying foxes because of the cream yellow fur around their eyes, it looks like they are wearing glasses!