The Myee Road bat colony is a perfect example of how local councillors can help their community.
This is more so in Campbelltown, which is a single ward for the purpose of council elections.
This means that each of the 15 councillors elected represent the entire local government.
Some councils, including neighbours Liverpool, Camden and Wollondilly, run their elections across a number of wards, thereby reducing the area each of the councillors represent.
Not so in Campbelltown, which persists with a single ward, for better or worse.
Either way, all 15 councillors represent those long suffering residents in Myee Road, Macquarie Fields.
One of the residents told me how he has to leave for work at 4.30am and sometimes he has had hardly any sleep at all because of the noise from the thousands of bats metres form the back of his home.
It is also important to note that some of these people were living there long before the grey headed flying fox – as the bats are also called – brought their colony to a small stretch of bush at the rear of Myee Road.
No doubt the bats – for whatever reason – needed a new location for their colony.
Research suggests that can happen from time to time and the bats do not stay in one place for ever.
Now even Blind Freddie knows they are a protected species so nobody’s calling for a declaration of war against the bats.
Councillors, who sometimes complain that since planning powers were taken away from them a few years ago they don’t have much to do, need to see this issue as the kind of thing where they make a real difference.
They will be getting a letter soon from the residents asking them to meet on site, and hopefully every councillor will take up the offer.
The better informed a councillor is the better decision he or she is able to make, and this will be the case here.
And to finish on a lighter note, the usual suspects took aim at our story on the bats earlier this week.
All very predictable stuff accusing the residents and anyone who supports them as ignorant of how important bats are in the eco system, etc, etc.
But the best comment was from someone who questioned our editorial standards, and suggested the story was not balanced.
Guilty as charged Your Honour, we failed to ask the bats for their side of the story.
