by Mike Daulton

Over the next 15 years, more than half of North America’s bat species are likely to experience severe population declines, according to the 2023 North American State of the Bats Report.

The report, published by Bat Conservation International (BCI) and our partners in the North American Bat Conservation Alliance (NABCA), defines in stark terms the perils bats now face. The study found 98% of bat species are losing habitat and 82% face risks from climate change. Bats are facing these devastating global threats while also facing one of the worst wildlife diseases in a century. White-nose Syndrome has killed nine out of every ten little brown bats, northern long-eared bats, and tricolored bats, and the destruction continues.

That’s why BCI, our partners, and our supporters are springing into action. BCI is implementing the most wide-ranging field solutions ever tested to save bats from white-nose syndrome, utilizing cutting-edge approaches like artificial prey patches and customized microclimates in caves and mines to help bats survive.

hen Natalie Weber saw the truckload of logs scattered across the roadway in southeastern Guinea, she figured her team might be waiting a while. When she saw other stranded travelers build fires and start to cook along the side of the road, she realized they might be in for a long wait, but she took it all in stride. Weber has worked with Guinea’s bats since 2007, and she’s conducted fieldwork in many remote parts of the world, so travel delays are nothing new to her. Her latest foray into the wilds of Guinea was from late January to early March 2023 as a Bat Conservation International (BCI) Research Consultant. Based in Germany, Weber joined a collaborative field team to conduct a bat survey at four sites in the southeastern part of the country. The expedition was wildly successful, recording around 30 different bat species. To put that figure in context, the United States has approximately 50 bat species.

“We’re still waiting for confirmation through genetic results, but it should be a good 30 species that we encountered on the trip,” Weber says.

by Stefanie Waldek

After spending the last decade researching endangered species on various Indian Ocean islands, Dr. Isabella Mandl knows her subjects. But on each of her recent trips to the remote islands of Comoros, the locally native Livingstone’s fruit bats have surprised her.

For weeks at a time, Dr. Mandl, Bat Conservation International (BCI) Endangered Species Interventions Research Fellow, heads to Comoros to tag the Critically Endangered Livingstone’s fruit bat (Pteropus livingstonii) with GPS trackers. Because little is known about the habits of these bats, which have a maximum wingspan of four feet, the tracking data provides crucial information about their day-to-day lives.

by Annika S. Hipple

In early 2019, researchers from Bat Conservation International (BCI), together with colleagues from Rwanda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, realized a scientific dream: the rediscovery of the Critically Endangered Hill’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hilli), a species found in only one place, Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda. Since then, ongoing species monitoring has yielded important information about this rare and fascinating bat.

In partnership with the Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association, the Rwanda Development Board, Nyungwe Management Company, and African Parks, BCI supports acoustic monitoring by park rangers to identify important roosting and foraging sites. As bats move through their habitat, they use echolocation for spatial orientation and to find food, emitting unique calls at high frequencies beyond the range of human hearing. Nyungwe rangers use special recorders, or “bat detectors,” to capture this acoustic data and lower the sounds to levels human ears can hear. From there, they can match calls with GPS data identifying where they were recorded.

r. Adrià López Baucells is a bat ecologist and conservationist who has traveled the world studying and photographing bats. The National Geographic Explorer is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural Science Museum of Granollers in Catalonia, Spain. Dr. Baucells started his career working with bats at the museum in 2005 while earning his bachelor’s degree.

As he continued his studies, he worked in Colombia studying neotropical bats, and in Australia researching flying foxes. Then he spent three years in Brazil collecting data for his doctorate on bats’ habitat loss and forest fragmentation.

by Lynn Davis

lanting agaves in strategic locations throughout the arid landscape between Central Mexico and the U.S. Southwest is one way to sustain diminishing numbers of Mexican long-nosed bats (Leptonycteris nivalis) and assure the survival of desert ecosystems, according to Dr. Ana Ibarra, Bat Conservation International’s Strategic Advisor for Endangered Species in Mexico and Latin America. Dr. Ibarra is one of nearly a dozen people interviewed and profiled in a series of videos and short online features that illustrate what is being done to save Endangered Mexican long-nosed bats and diminishing numbers of agaves.

It’s important to understand that bats and agaves have a mutualistic relationship and depend on each other to survive. During the spring and early summer, pregnant Mexican long-nosed bats migrate hundreds of miles north from Central Mexico to give birth to a single pup. Along the way, the bats nourish themselves by sipping nectar from the blooms of agave and other flowering desert vegetation. When the bats drink the nectar, their fur collects grains of pollen and distributes that pollen as they move from bloom to bloom.

by Kristen Pope

n Madagascar, people share many buildings with bats, and Bat Conservation International (BCI) Student Scholar Anecia Gentles is working on learning more about how these shared spaces impact human health. Gentles is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia, working with field assistants Stèphie Raveloson and Sidonie Rakotoarisoa on a project studying insectivorous bats in eastern Madagascar. They are studying how the physical characteristics of buildings might relate to the presence of bats roosting inside and how that may translate to the risk of pathogens spreading to humans. They are also learning how humans feel about bats and sharing space.

“We are most interested in whether or not there are any health consequences for people who have to share their space with these really large bat colonies,” Gentles says. “Some of these buildings have had bats for as long as people have worked in these buildings. A lot of the schools are anywhere from 50-100 years old, and no one knows of a time when there were no bats in the buildings, so the guano buildup is quite a bit, and you can smell it from far away.”