A long-term project to revegetate natural bat habitat in forests surrounding the Eurobodalla is the answer to Batemans Bay’s flying fox issue, The Greens say.

Gilmore Greens candidate Carmel McCallum visited the Batemans Water Garden with Senator Lee Rhiannon on Wednesday for the first time to see the flying fox colony. 

Ms Rhiannon said Federal Minister Greg Hunt was “irresponsible” to declare a national interest exemption to move the bats on. 

“He may have thought he was doing a favour for Mr Constance and the other Liberal candidates, but it is not the way,” she said. 

“He is the minister for the environment, he should know the complexity of the issue we are dealing with. 

“Mr Hunt would have been more sensible to put his weight behind ending logging of our native forests.”

Ms McCallum said dispersing the bats would be “like herding cats”. She said the bats were in Batemans Bay because of the destruction of their natural habitat.

“The logging of the forests is so destructive. It takes out huge areas of land,” she said. 

“We need to stop the logging and revegetate their natural habitat so they will go back to being away from residential areas.”

Ms McCallum said she understood residents’ concerns. 

“It would be really difficult to live with these, I understand about the noise and mess,” she said. 

Ms Rhiannon did not want people to be inconvenienced by the bats but said dispersing them would just “push the problem onto someone else”. 

“You look at a branch and there are just so many on a single branch. It is not natural to have such a dense population. I have never seen a colony this big,” she said. 

“These are a threatened species. When you have such a dense population, it isn’t healthy for the species either. We have to ask ourselves why this is happening?

“Why this is happening is because of a lack of habitat, so they collect together. 

“We need to recognise that driving these bats away is not going to help the animals or the locals in the long run.

“They have tried it elsewhere and they keep coming back.