Happy New Year Bat Fans!
Welcome to the first of our quarterly Bat Fan newsletters—which this time will also serve as an annual summary. Thank you for making 2015 a wonderful year of progress!
Despite clouds of needlessly exaggerated disease warnings hovering over bats, together we’re flooding publishers with a brighter, positive side. When asked, you stepped up and sent emails and social media posts that, combined with our newly available photos, are already leading to marked improvement. Publishers of some of the worst scare stories ever seen are finally beginning to understand and help. Nothing could be more timely or important to the future of bats. People who fear bats do kill them, and without our combined efforts, the results could be disastrous!
Influencing Bat Media— Our combined communications with decision makers have already accomplished so much, we’re going to make them a staple in our future. If we come across exceptional representations, stories, comments, or programs about bats, we will send out a “Bat Flash.” If you see this symbol in an email, on Facebook, Instagram or our website it indicates an opportunity for you to help. We’ll be sending links enabling simple and prompt congratulations or protests.
Sharing the Beauty of Bats— Thanks to your generous donations supporting our Bat Scan 2015 project, we’ve already scanned more than 9,000 Kodachrome slides from my original collection of some 73,000, dramatically improving access for conservation education. This collection has been at the forefront in reversing age-old misconceptions about bats. Yet, most of these beautiful images are just now becoming available for the first time. Searching for an individual slide in a climate-controlled vault, scanning, then returning it can take hours. Bat Scan 2015 makes it possible to share these previously unavailable images with the world in a matter of seconds. In recent months, more than 127 individuals, institutions and publishers from 21 countries have downloaded more than 959 bat photos, gratis, in support of conservation. And single gratis internet presentations have reached millions of people worldwide. However, much costly work remains. Through some 40 years of taxonomic revisions, countless bat names require updating. Captions must be researched, and data must be organized for easy internet access, all requiring skilled personnel. With your continued help we will complete the scanning phase by mid-2016.
Meet Teresa Nichta, archivist extraordinaire! Momentum has increased dramatically since hiring Teresa in August. Her archiving, organizational and social media skills are outstanding. Backed by extremely generous early donors and an extraordinary team of consultants provided by long-time friends, Bettina and Travis Mathis, we are already exceeding our initial timelines.
What Else Did We Do This Year?
In early April, my hour-long plenary speech to conservationists from 22 nations, at the annual meeting of Asia-Pacific Associates of Tropical Biology and Conservation, held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia opened many new doors for bats. A two-hour discussion session, two-day workshop and thousands of new bat photos contributed greatly to regional progress. Conservationists in Cambodia and Thailand are now armed with photos of more than 50 bat species, for the first time illustrating the many values of bats.
We also discovered a simple remedy likely to halt recent decline of free-tailed bats in Thailand’s famous Khao Chong Pran Bat Cave (first protected through my efforts in 1982)—simple clearing of overgrown vegetation.
Our October highlight was the release of my new book, The Secret Lives of Bats: My Adventures with the World’s Most Misunderstood Mammals. Top reviews and 50 media interviews reached tens of millions of people worldwide, and we anticipate readership impact for many years to come.
With lots of invaluable help from Bat Fans, team members and colleagues we were additionally able to respond to hundreds of inquiries, lecture widely and facilitate lots of new conservation actions.
Once again, thank you, Bat Fans!
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