This is a translation of a news article from a national TV news station (MetroTV) reporting on the mystery of bats disappearing from a West Java pilgrimage tourism area. Although the article does not say as much, I know the bats are Pteropus vampyrus
Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi supports an extraordinarily diverse assemblage of pteropodids, with 16 species documented. This diversity may in part reflect the great altitudinal range (from 350 to 2100 m a.s.l.) and diversity of vegetation types that combine to produce 17 habitat types. In a recent issue of Hysterix - Italian Journal of Mammalogy, Ibnu Maryanto and colleagues from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) report on their standardized survey of the park in which they mist-netted for bats from 7 altitudinal zones of 11 vegetation types.
In an important paper in press in Biological Conservation, Mark Harrison and colleagues describe how questionnaire surveys of hunters and market vendors in Central Kalimantan revealed decreasing availability of flying foxes, from which it can be inferred that populations are declining. This trend looks likely to continue and Kalimantan, like other parts of the Old World tropics, will lose the ecological services that these bats provide. They are purchased for food and in the mistaken belief that their consumption relieves the symptoms of asthma. Hunters and vendors are frequently bitten and are unaware of the risks of contracting diseases from the bats.
Mark E. Harrison, Susan M Cheyne, Fiteria Darma, Dwi Angan Ribowo, Suwido H. Limin, Matthew J. Streubig (2011 - in press). Hunting of flying foxes and perception of disease risk in Indonesian Borneo. Biological Conservation.
Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for a copy. Newspaper articles referred to in the paper have been translated by Sephy Noerfahmy and Matt Struebig for us, and we will be posting a revised copy of the questionnaire used by the team in the coming weeks.
Read more: Hunting of flying foxes and perception of disease risk in Indonesian Borneo