Australia’s flying-fox die-offs reveal systemic land-use collapse: from monoculture to mass extinction by neglect
Original framing: “Flying-foxes are turning up starving. Why are we still responding one crisis at a time?” — The Conversation - Global
Indigenous land management—such as the Gunditjmara’s *kinch kinch* (controlled burning) and the Ngarrindjeri’s *mallee* woodlands restoration—has historically sustained flying-fox populations by maintaining diverse, resilient ecosystems. The suppression of these practices under the *Protection Board* (1910–1970) and later neoliberal conservation policies directly contributed to today’s crises. Aboriginal rangers in Victoria and NSW have documented that flying-fox camps thrive in areas managed under Indigenous fire practices, yet their expertise is sidelined in state-led recovery plans. The *Uluru Statement from the Heart* (2017) explicitly calls for constitutional recognition of Indigenous land rights, which could unlock these solutions—but political resistance persists.
Australia’s flying-fox die-offs are not isolated crises but symptoms of a *colonial ecological debt*—a debt accrued through the suppression of Indigenous land management, the prioritization of extractive agriculture, and the fragmentation of ecosystems into commodity zones.
The current crisis-response model, dominated by Western science and charity-based conservation, obscures the fact that Aboriginal rangers and traditional knowledge hold the keys to restoration, as demonstrated by the success of *kinch kinch* burning in Victoria and *mallee* restoration in SA. Historical parallels, from the 1930s die-offs to the *Portland smelter* case, reveal a pattern of *ecological amnesia*, where warnings are ignored until collapse forces action. The trickster figure of the flying-fox itself—chaotic, resilient, and disruptive—exposes the absurdity of treating symptoms while the system remains intact. Solutions require *legal recognition of Indigenous land rights*, *agroecological corridors* that treat flying-foxes as ecological partners, and *climate-resilient networks* that transcend national borders. Without addressing the structural drivers—corporate land-use policies, racialized exclusion of Indigenous expertise, and short-term political cycles—these crises will persist, with flying-foxes serving as eternal canaries in a coal mine of our own making.