by Sandra Peters
The Kayapó people who live in a remote village in the Brazilian jungle felt besieged by vampire bats. The region held an unusually large population of the bats (Desmodus rotundus), and they frequently entered homes in the small, traditional village.
Villagers lacked the resources to seal their homes' many openings, so hunting or poison was considered the only solution - and that would doubtless kill many of the fruit-, nectar- and insect-eating bats that are vital to the region's environmental health.
I had became acquainted with the Kayapó of the A'Ukre village in 2002, when, as a University of Toronto graduate student, I conducted research nearby on the impact of selective mahogany logging on bats. One of the most enjoyable aspects of my fieldwork was spending time with my field assistants from A'Ukre. I was constantly awed by their knowledge of plants and animals, and to say that they impressed me with their forest skills would be an understatement.
As my Kayapó language skills gradually improved, I started to understand the vampire problem and how it had convinced most villagers that all bats are dangerous. The only effective solution would be to keep bats out of houses by blocking all the openings.
That's when Bat Conservation International came to the rescue. A BCI scholarship had supported my research, and I approached BCI's Global Grassroots Conservation Fund for help in protecting the village from vampire bats while conserving other bat species that were likely losing their natural roosts to the vampires. BCI agreed to fund the project, and I returned to A'Ukre in the fall of 2003.
The plan was simple: cover all openings with coarse mosquito netting so the vampire bats could not gain access to houses. The work was hot and dirty but very successful. After three weeks of work, each of the 29 houses in the village was completely screened and vampire-free.
An unforeseen but very welcome outcome of this project was a change in villagers' perceptions of bats. People came often to my house to look at photos of bats in the field guides I had brought. With a little knowledge, they began to appreciate the diversity of tropical bats and the important roles bats play in tropical forests.
BCI members may read the whole story of the vampire bats of A'Ukre in the Summer issue of BATS magazine. To help support BCI's Global Grassroots Conservation Fund, contact Nicole Daspit, Acting Director of Development, at ndaspit@batcon.org or (512) 327-9721.
