Learning to Live with Flying-foxes: an Argument for Feminist and Indigenous Ethics of Care

CORONEL, Davita (2024). Thèse de doctorat. Deakin University.

This thesis explores the relationships of care between people and the grey-headed flying-foxes in Melbourne, Australia. Grey-headed flying-foxes are a native bat species in south-eastern Australia listed as ‘threatened with extinction’ due to concerns over their population decline. This is the result of over 200 years of habitat destruction and persecution since British settlement. Bat advocates emphasise the importance of learning to live with flying-foxes. This thesis offers a cultural and structural analysis of the problem. I explore the question of living with flying-foxes through the lens of feminist and Indigenous care ethics. These theories conceptualise care as consisting of skills of attentiveness, responsibility, and responsiveness that can be cultivated in community. I have used the following research questions: 1. What are the relationships of care between flying-foxes and humans, and how is the bats’ agency placed in this? 2. What social, historical and cultural dynamics influence these relationships? 3. What are the implications of this study for flying-foxes in Melbourne, and similar places elsewhere? I have conducted qualitative, mixed-method research consisting of (1) bat observation, (2) semi-structured interviews with bat scientists, bat carers, biodiversity officers and an Elder of the Wurundjeri community in Melbourne, (3) participant observation with bat volunteers, (4) media-analysis, and (5) analysis of records in the wildlife emergency responsive service. I develop an understanding of different forms of care for flying-foxes and the skills people have developed, including the ability of interspecies communication. I find that care is disproportionally channelled toward the individual in controlled encounters with flying-foxes, both individual flying-foxes who come into care due to clashes with urban infrastructure and individual humans who are transformed in their attitudes. Care efforts in the broader community need to be directed to flying-fox worlds, that come with the pragmatics of relationality, to learn to live with them in uncontrollable situations.