SEABCRU » human-bat conflicts http://www.seabcru.org Southeast Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit Fri, 10 Feb 2023 22:02:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.15 Bat Killing at Batu Caves, Malaysia http://www.seabcru.org/?p=1123 http://www.seabcru.org/?p=1123#comments Fri, 04 Oct 2013 15:26:19 +0000 /?p=1123 Many years ago the Malaysian Bat Conservation Research Unit developed an outreach role-play activity called “Saving Batu Caves” (which you can download from this page). In the activity, participants represented different stakeholders, from conservationists to a limestone extraction company, invested the fate of Malaysia’s famous Batu Caves and vigorously debated the caves’ future.  The caves have great cultural value, but are also home to many species of bats (10-15).

It looks like I may need to add a new “antagonistic” stakeholder to the activity — I was dismayed to see this press article in the Star Online, reporting that a local tourist company had hired a pest control company to get rid of bats from some of the caves. More heartening however, was that the response from Friends of Batu Caves and it will be interesting to see how the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (PERHILITAN in the article) responds. If anyone picks up further news, please let me know so we can post updates.

Bat killing Batu Caves  (pdf of article)

 

 

]]> http://www.seabcru.org?feed=rss2&p=1123 0 The perils of pollination http://www.seabcru.org/?p=1073 http://www.seabcru.org/?p=1073#comments Mon, 09 Sep 2013 13:01:01 +0000 /?p=1073 Although Eonycteris spelaea pollinates commercially important plants, as illustrated in the recent paper by Sara Bumrungsri and colleagues,  this sometimes costs them their lives. Fruit farmers find the flowers of such plants lying on the ground the morning after bats have visited and think the bats have destroyed them. The farmers do not realise that  bat-pollinated flowers generally open for one night only and then fall, so they put up nets to prevent the bats from approaching the flowers. The bats get caught in the nets and are left to die. Public education is trying to prevent this travesty.

 

Sara Bumrungsri, Duncan Lang, Colin Harrower, Ekapong Sripaoraya, Kitika Kitpipit and Paul A Racey. 2103. The dawn bat, Eonycteris spelaea Dobson (chiroptera: Pteorpodidae) feeds mainly on pollen of economically important food plants in Thailand. Acta Chiropterologica 15: 95-104

Bumrungsri et al_Acta Chiro_2013

Photos below by Pushpa Acharya

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