NSW orchardists are being encouraged to apply expensive netting to their properties, instead of or in addition to trapping or shooting pests such as flying foxes, some birds and bats. The NSW government has increased subsidies for drape over netting in a bid to keep the NSW foodbowl a viable industry. “It’s a shame the government has to spend money on this at all. Foodbowl is important but nobody wants to go around shooting hundreds of flying foxes. I don’t know what the solution is though. We have no choice but to have everything we want to sell netted,” says Lynelle Silm, of Cedar Creek Orchards, located about 90 minutes outside of Sydney.
While there are some programs operating to move colonies of flying foxes to areas where they are not harming commercial crops, growers are still facing an uphill battle to contain the damage caused in years when bats or flying foxes decide to settle where they grow their fruit. Netting can cost upwards of $70,000 per hectare and subsidies usually cover less than $40,000 of the cost at present, according to Ms Silm.
“Before we had netting we had to keep driving around, moving the flying foxes on to the next place,” says Ralph Wilson, a grower and owner of Wilgro Orchards. “At times we’ve had damage to as much as 15% of our crop, and ongoing it’s about 5-10%. It’s a combination of cockatoos, flying foxes and bats, which aren’t always bad every year.”
“Last year I walked down to our apple trees when they were ready to be picked, and from 10 foot tall trees there was nothing above 3 foot high, or about the height of my waist,” says Ms Silm. “That’s more than half our crop. When you’re losing the tops of the trees it’s a matter of ‘get them off now before we lose anymore.’” The Silms also grow stonefruits, and make apple juice from lower graded fruit not suitable for selling whole. The stonefruit season is when bats are at their worst, according to Ms Silm, who says the farm can lose as much as 30% of the crop when things are bad.
Cedar Creek and Wilgro are part of a dying breed thanks to the pest problems, according to Ms Silm. “A lot of growers our size are no longer around because of problems like this,” she says. The orchard also survives because it is able to export to Asian countries including Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.