Grove Koger
A recent mailing from my friends at Bat Conservation International (BCI) has highlighted the group’s campaign to save the Livingstone’s fruit bat (Pteropus livingstonii), one of nine bat species living in the Comoro Islands.
Livingstone’s fruit bats are large, with wingspans reaching nearly five feet, and, as their name suggests, they eat fruit as well as leaves, seeds, and nectar. They’re also apparently the most endangered bat in the world, classified as “Critically Endangered” on the Red List maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Their range is limited to two small islands, Anjouan and Mohéli, in the Union of the Comoros, an island nation lying at the northern entrance to the Mozambique Channel northwest of Madagascar. For a time, the two islands were under French control, and Anjouan in particular has seen its share of political violence over the past few decades. On both islands, population growth and deforestation threaten the bats’ survival.
The Bristol Zoo and the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust are both engaged in captive-breeding programs for Livingstone’s fruit bats, but the BCI has initiated an end-of-the year campaign to raise $245,000 in an effort to save the bats in their native habitat. The group’s scientists plan to monitor bat roosts, foraging sites, and shelters with GPS tracking. They’ll then use the information to help them work with local organizations to reduce deforestation and improve the lives of the farmers who would otherwise be cutting down the forests that the bats live in.
I hope that all my readers who are able to do so will contribute to Bat Conservation International’s campaign in their year-end giving!
The photograph of a Livingstone’s fruit bat in the Bristol Zoo, Bristol, England, is by Adrian Pingstone and is reproduced courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, while the photograph of Anjouan’s Lake Dzialandze is by Peioma and is reproduced courtesy of Wikivoyage. The map of the Union of the Comoros (and the island of Mayotte, which remains a department of France) is the work of the United Nations Cartographic Section.
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