With my colleagues in Malaysia, I was invited to put together a review of our activities as the Malaysian Bat Conservation Research Unit (MBCRU) for Malaysian Applied Biology. The MBCRU was established in 2001, and in many ways was the model for the SEABCRU. 

Kingston, T., Juliana, S., Nurul-Ain, E., Hashim, R. & Zubaid, A (2012). The Malaysian Bat Conservation Research Unit: From a national model to an international network. Malaysian Applied Biology, 41(2): 1–10.  

Please contact me at tigga dot kingston at ttu dot edu for a pdf, or find the article on my Researchgate page. 

PPl

Isham Azhar from UNIMAS has shared with us a great poster of the Bats of Penang National Park, which he prepared for the Penang Wildlife Department following recent surveys. 

You can find it on the Malaysian outreach page listed for download under Poster Penang.ppt. 

I thought I'd draw attention to the growing resource of outreach materials available in Bahasa Indonesian, which can be found and downloaded here. Bat Conservation International developed the brochure “Save the Bats” in collaboration with the Alliance for Tompotika Conservation (tompotika.org) to help save Flying Foxes in Sulawesi. For outreach in Sumatra with coffee farmers, Joe Chun-Chia Huang worked with Taufiq Purna Nugraha and Sephy Noerfahmy to modify and translate materials from the Malaysian Bat Party Pack.  In addition, there are some superb posters of the ecology and conservation of bats that can be used for display or as a basis for lectures. You can read about the workshop conducted by the Bukit Barisan Selatan Bat Research Team (BBSBRT) from University of Lampung (UNILA) and Texas Tech University here.

Please continue to use, adapt and share materials!

Bats are the least studied and most neglected mammals in Bangladesh. Most of the people hate bats due to misconceptions and age-old myths. Some peoples treat the bat as only a pest of crops, nuisance and dirty animal. Besides concurrent outbreak of nipah encephalitis (Nipah Encephalits, a fatal zoonotic disease of human associated with date palm sap contamination by fruits bat in Bangladesh) creates a negative attitude among the community people. So it was an urgent need to conduct educational program among the community people to protect these fascinating mammals in Bangladesh.  We started our first bat conservation education program in 2009. The program was supported by Whitley Wildlife Conservation Fund, Global Grass root conservation fund of Bat Conservation International and Columbus Zoo Conservation Fund in consequent year. We have an aim to conduct series of educational program among the community people to eliminate the myths and spreading the message about the role of bats. 

Read more: Updates on the first bat conservation education program in Bangladesh

A mini one-night workshop was host by University of Lampung (UNILA) and conducted by Bukit Barisan Selatan Bat Research Team (BBSBRT) in Way Heni of southwestern Sumatra on July 14 2012. The aim of this workshop is to introduce bats to the local community of Bukit Barisan Selatan (BBS) landscape, which is one of the known areas with most bat species in Sumatra but also a major Robusta coffee agricultural region in Southeast Asia. We hope the workshop can improve coffee famers’ understanding of bats and the ecological services of bats. Then eventually can help the local community to recognize importance of bats to their life and participating in conservation work.

Read more: Changing the Face of Coffee Farmers: 2012 Bat Workshop in southwestern Sumatra