Bats may be perceived as scary but they are a critical part of many ecosystems around the world. The really scary fact about bats has nothing to do with their vampire-like reputations but with the fact that according to the Bat Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), bats are some of the world’s most endangered species. This is due in part to habitat destruction. In my last post about bats, I talked about how harvesting bat guano contributes to this habitat loss and the work of our Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders (EWCL) team project to develop international standards for the sustainable harvest of bat guano. By developing standards for sustainable harvesting practices, many of these harmful impacts to bats can be avoided.

The EWCL Bat Group convenes in Florida to plan their sustainable guano harvesting project. That’s me, Alli, on the far left doing my best bat pose.

Since my last post, our team has been hard at work on the first phase of developing these standards, with the goal of getting the standards adopted by IUCN in September 2012. IUCN is a global membership organization consisting of NGOs, government agencies and scientists working on some of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including biodiversity loss. IUCN’s species programme focuses on assessment and developing tools for sustainable species management—which is exactly why our team wants their endorsement on standards for sustainable guano harvesting.

The EWCL bat team has spent some time researching guano harvesting and its impacts on bats and developed a draft set of guidelines. But to really make these guidelines have an impact, we’ve reached out to bat experts from around the world. Our team has formed a five-person advisory committee with experts from the Philippines, Cambodia, the U.S. and the U.K. The committee will take our initial research and draft guidelines and fine-tune them so that they are applicable to situations facing harvesters, communities and governments on the ground.

For example, how will guano harvesting be monitored to ensure that these guidelines are followed and if they are effective? Who should monitor the harvesting? How will the guidelines affect local people? What are the impacts of guano harvesting on the invertebrate communities living in the guano and how should these guidelines address those species?

These are the kinds of big issues that our advisory committee and EWCL team will be grappling with over the next couple of months. With help from our partners, we hope to take draft guidelines developed by the committee to communities in Cambodia and the Philippines to test them out in the real world. With these guidelines, we hope to make the world a little less scary—for the bats.

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Adopt a Bat Today!

Bats play an incredibly important role in the ecosystem, eating billions of crop-destroying insects like moths and beetles, as well as mosquitoes. But in just four years, more than a million bats have been killed by the mysterious disease known as white nose syndrome.

Your bat adoption will show everyone that bats are nothing to fear and help Defenders continue to work to protect these amazing creatures and the places they live.

Visit our Wildlife Adoption & Gift Center to adopt any of our other imperiled creatures of the night—and day!

Take Action to Help Save Bats!

A new petition has gone up on the White House’s We the People site to urge President Obama to fund the fight against White-nose Syndrome in his Fiscal Year 2013 budget. The petition requires 25,000 signatures by November 25th, 2011 to receive a response from the White House.

Please take a moment to speak up for bats by signing the petition. (Note: You must register with whitehouse.gov to be able to sign the petition.)

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