Saving Critically Endangered Bats From Feral Cats

Predator-proof fencing installed at Jamaica’s St. Clair Cave

by Katie Brown

Tucked beneath a massive sinkhole adorned with ancient tree roots lies a nearly two-mile-long cave complex known as St. Clair Cave. The massive cave system within Jamaica’s remote Polly Ground community houses 2 million bats and includes 10 cave-dwelling species.

“A cave with that many bats and species is always going to be worthy of our attention,” says Dr. Jon Flanders, Bat Conservation International’s (BCI) Director of Endangered Species Interventions, who calls the mega-roost site “a paradise for bats.” The impressive breeding ground is the last frontier for the Critically Endangered Jamaican greater funnel-eared bat (Natalus jamaicensis), whose population has dwindled to roughly 250 individuals.

“My goal for this job is to not oversee the extinction of a bat species,” says Dr. Flanders, who views the conservation of St. Clair Cave as “the last hope for the species.” For the past five years, Dr. Flanders has been working alongside Jamaican environmental regulators and community members to ensure the fragile cave system stays protected.

Cave-dwelling bats require a safe and stable environment to survive. To keep caves cozy enough to roost in, bats rely on the decomposition of their excrement—or guano—to maintain a suitable climate and temperature in the cave.

While urbanization, habitat change, and ecotourism impact fragile cave environments, predation from feral cats remains the biggest threat to the cave-roosting bats in St. Clair Cave. BCI and local stakeholder groups have implemented long-term solutions to these deadly disturbances to keep bats out of the clutches of these felines.

Only around 250 Critically Endangered Jamaican greater funnel-eared bats are known to exist, and all are in one Jamaican cave.

The first part of the predator-proof fence at St. Clair Cave aims to keep bats safe from feral cats.

Photo: Dr. Jon Flanders

“The local community members are key custodians of this internationally recognized cave with this amazing amount of bats and the last known population of Jamaican greater funnel-eared bats.” —Dr. Jon Flanders

This year, BCI and partners finished the construction of a predator-proof fence that keeps cats out of the cave while allowing them to escape back into the wild and prowl elsewhere. By building trust with surrounding communities, sharing information with residents about the looming threats to cave-dwelling bats, and raising funds to save species from going extinct, BCI has helped drive sustainable solutions for the St. Clair Cave.

“You can’t rush a project like this when it involves communities,” says Dr. Flanders. “We’ve been able to take our time to slowly work to this point and get to where we are now—to remove this nightly threat of bats being ripped out of the air by cats.”

This new line of defense should last two decades and is just the first phase of this project aiming to protect Endangered cave-roosting bats from being wiped out.

Going forward, community members will work as rangers monitoring the fence’s effectiveness. At the same time, Jamaica’s National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) remains on guard if developers attempt to build near this sensitive conservation area.

BCI will continue using high-tech and hands-off monitoring methods to assess the health of St. Clair Cave to make the greatest impact on bat conservation while causing the least disturbance. Some of these cutting-edge techniques include 3D cave mapping using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scans, infrared monitoring so people can see inside caves without disturbing bats, and tapping into airborne and water environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling methods to get a real-time picture of the status of bat populations.

Predation by feral cats is the main threat to these Critically Endangered bats, so BCI and partners installed a predator-proof fence to keep them out.

Monitoring through minimally invasive methods and getting more people involved across Jamaica are important ways to help the Endangered bat populations recover.

“The local community members are key custodians of this internationally recognized cave with this amazing amount of bats and the last known population of Jamaican greater funnel-eared bats,” Dr. Flanders says. “Thanks to BCI being committed to work on this for an extended period of time, we’ve had the capacity and time to do this properly and to see it all through is the only way to ensure this is going to last.”

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