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Fruit Bat Conservation Bats make up one fifth of all mammals (1,116 species). They are among the most endangered of the world's creatures, primarily because much of their habitat has been eliminated by human encroachment or because they are over hunted for food or persecuted as pests or disease carriers. Their loss has serious consequences for the ecosystems to which they belong because bats are important seed dispersers and pollinators for many native flowering plants, and key insect predators globally.

LUBEE BAT CONSERVANCY

Lubee Bat Conservancy is an international non-profit organization working with others to save fruit bats and their habitats through research, conservation, and education.

We focus our efforts on fruit bats because they are vulnerable to extinction yet vital to the world’s rainforests and deserts and to the economies of developing countries. By protecting these bats we are working to conserve the more than 145 genera of plants that depend on them for pollination and seed dispersal; the countless organisms that depend on those plants for food and shelter; and ultimately all people that depend on healthy ecosystems.

ABOUT FRUIT BATS

Bats are pollinators and seed dispersers for an incredible variety of flowering plants. From savannah to rainforest, it is the large numbers of bats that is essential to the health of whole ecosystems that provide food and livelihoods for people.

While feeding, fruit bats perform important ecological functions for the plants – sharing the role of seed dispersers and pollinators with the birds and the bees.

The vital services provided by bats in the pollination of flowering plants, the dispersal and subsequent establishment of forest vegetation remains largely unrecognized, and yet helps maintain familiar desert and forest landscapes.

Many plants that rely on bats are of great livelihood and economic value; including wild bananas, figs, agave, and Durian.

The potential contribution of large congregations of bats to fruit tand forest regeneration is particularly important in developing countries, where local communities are highly dependent on fruit, wood and other forest products.

BAT CONSERVATION ISSUES

Bats are extremely vulnerable to extinction – whole populations of hundreds of thousands, even millions, have been destroyed in single acts. Habitat loss and persecution severely threaten fruit bats.

Like many larger animals, fruit bats are now severely affected by the bushmeat trade. They are sold for food or medicine on markets across Africa and Asia, having been hunted out of their leafy homes.

Hunting is both for local consumption and commercial, somtimes involving cross-border transactions. Cane rat, monket and bat are the bushmeats most often being found smuggled into the United States (CDC).

FRUIT BATS AND HUMAN HEALTH

As the competition for dwindling space and forest resources continues to rise, so does human encroachment upon fruit bat habitats, bringing bats and people into closer contact and raising concerns over the potential for zoonotic disease transmission.

Why not just exterminate bats? Culling is not practical as bats can fly away, and back. Also, bats provide essential ecosystem services that we depend on (crop pollination, forest regeneration, and insect control), and losing them would be detrimental to human welfare and the environment.

Preventing future disease emergence should instead focus on human behavior. Prevention is still the most effective and economical way to protect people.

We can more easily prevent the emergence of disease from bats by:

Minimizing the way we encroach on bats habitats
Reducing direct contact between humans and fruit bats
Stopping eating bats as a source of bushmeat or medicine

FRUIT BAT PICTURES

You can use low resolution photos from this web site copyright Lubee Bat Conservancy, unless a picture is marked otherwise.

Please contact Lubee for higher quality/resolution photo usage, we can send high quality pictures of the species we maintain in captivity for a small fee.

Contact : Dr Allyson Walsh, Director. awalsh@lubee.org

Tel 352-485-1250