The small, inviting Cayman Islands are home to many beneficial bats, which are usually misunderstood, unappreciated, and often persecuted. (Photo: ©Elaine Acker, BCI / 7494108.)

Conserving Caribbean Bats

Bats are the only mammals native to the Cayman Islands and they greatly benefit the environment of these three small and lovely Caribbean islands. Yet bats are largely unappreciated and often persecuted by the people of the Caymans. That is beginning to change.

Lois Blumenthal of the Caribbean Bat Conservation Programme is greatly magnifying the impact of modest grants from Bat Conservation International's Global Grassroots Conservation Fund. With Global Grassroots seed money, her group is using local volunteers and donated equipment and labor to change attitudes, scatter bat houses around the islands, and learn much more about the bats of the Caymans.

Already, high school students, learning about bats by conducting surveys as volunteer field assistants, have discovered a breeding colony of Cuban fig-eating bats, (Phyllops falcatus), which had not been seen in the Cayman Islands since 1906.

These bats, with yellowish fur, white shoulder patches, a large noseleaf, and no tail, are rare throughout their range: Cuba, Hispaniola, and the Caymans. Although none has been seen in the Caymans for almost a century, their bones are found occasionally in the roosts of owls.

Cuban fig-eating bats (Phyllops falcatus) were discovered on the Cayman Islands, where they had not been seen for almost a century. (Photo: ©Elaine Acker, BCI / 7493411.)

BCI grants were also used to buy materials to build 11 pairs of bat houses, scores of which Blumenthal has scattered over the three Cayman islands since 1994. Mounting poles were donated by the local utility, and the double nursery houses were built by the Cayman Island Prison Woodshop.

She uses bat houses in conjunction with safe and humane exclusions from local residences, with an increasingly successful emphasis on preventing exclusions from June to November, when pups are present and likely to be trapped inside.

Educational presentations to students and community groups are winning favorable media coverage about bats and fears and myths are slowly being dislodged.

One hundred percent of donations to BCI's Global Grassroots Conservation Fund go directly to the local projects. For more information on the Fund and its supported programs, visit the GGCF Page

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