On Saturday Bethany and her partner Tsiraiky organised a trip to see the flying fox colony at Sainte Luce. We took a pirogue across the lake and walked 5km across the wetlands and through the forest. We heard the chatter of hundreds of flying foxes and the sound of them flying past with their huge 1.5m wing span before we saw hundreds of them taking to the sky above their roost trees. Tsiraiky has been surveying these bats across the entire region for 10 years. Essential to forest health and regeneration through their seed dispersal fruit bats' habitat is threatened through deforestation. The slash and burn farming methods definitely have an impact and the scars on the landscape were obvious but what these people take is modest and for survival. The massive opencast mining of ilmenite which is a major source of titanium dioxide, predominantly used as a white pigment in products such as paints and paper devastates huge tracks of land so that we can have a whiter world. Who should we blame for the threat to these amazing creatures?

Posted by Friends of CRS at 2023-03-22 06:28:33 UTC