A conservation roadmap.
05.13.26
By Paul Hormick & Wendy K. Probst
As the moon rises over the noise and bustle of Delhi in north central India, the city comes to life. Everyone is going about their evening business—including the greater and lesser mouse-tailed bats who live in the 14th Century fort, Feroze Shah Kotla, where colonies of these bats have been quietly sharing the fort’s ruins with generations of visitors, turning forgotten stonework into a living sanctuary of urban wildlife.
Meanwhile, over a thousand miles southwest in the coastal forests of Bhimgad Wildlife Sanctuary, a roost of rare and enigmatic Wroughton’s free-tailed bats (Otomops wroughtoni) are performing swooping acrobatics to catch their sustenance of flying insects. Pan farther south, and a roost of Salim Ali’s fruit bats (Latidens salimalii) —one of the rarest bats in the world—are setting flight from a cave to forage for fresh fruit along the wild lands of the Western Ghats.
These are just three of the 135 species of bats spread across 3.28 million square kilometers (or 1.26 million square miles) of India’s diverse habitats. Scientifically speaking, there are many gaps in our knowledge of these bat species. The challenge: A country with 1.4 billion people has fewer than 50 dedicated bat researchers. In an age of increasing threats coupled with the lack of trained personnel, there is a growing need to prioritize topics for the research and conservation of Indian bats.
One of the key goals is for bats to be seen as a critical part of functioning ecosystems.
That’s why it’s extraordinary that BCI–in collaboration with the Nature Conservation Foundation—has just released the first ever State of India’s Bats report (SoIBats). An endeavor of more than 30 bat ecologists and conservationists from 27 academic institutions, this report is the first of its kind for India. Modeled on the North America State of the Bats report, this groundbreaking document identifies threats to India’s bats, research needs, and establishes conservation priorities.
Through this work, “a new cadre of batty researchers and conservationist has started to emerge,” says Vivek Monon, Founder and Executive Director of Wildlife Trust of India. The dedicated scientists working on this project say it has invigorated and unified contemporary bat research like no other initiative, spurring valuable research and collaboration even before its publication.
A Challenging Terrain
India is approximately one third the size of the U.S., yet it is a country of extremely differing terrain. These difficult and drastically varying environments can present obstacles for bat scientists. Wet and humid tropical rainforests stretch across much of the country, and India contains the Thar, one of the largest and foreboding subtropical deserts in Asia. Across the north are the Himalayas, the mountain range containing the highest peaks in the world.
Besides the impediments presented by India’s physical geography, the Asian subcontinent is also home to extraordinary cultural, religious, ethnic, and political diversity. Linguistically, India is a country with more than 400 native languages. These differences can present challenges for researchers. Complications can arise from issues related to the caste system, levels of education, and disparities of wealth when scientists examine human-bat interactions or other areas in which the public’s input is needed.
“There is always a compromise to be found to enable a peaceful co-existence between bats and humans.”
Assembling the Team
Starting in 2024 and through the early months of 2025, a team of scientists and conservationists participated in fifteen online meetings and one in-person gathering that took place over the course of two days. “The in-person workshop was a success from the start, as different working groups and colleagues met enthusiastically,” says Dr. Isabella Mandl, BCI’s Regional Director, Africa, South Asia. “My role as main facilitator was made easy by the high level of engagement and commitment all participants exhibited.”
Yet, the task that lay ahead of them was challenging. Despite their recognized benefits to ecosystems as seed dispersers and pollinators and the services bats provide to farmers by controlling insect pest populations, India’s research and conservation communities give little attention to bats.
Minding the Gaps
The team of scientists, ecologists, and others who compiled SoIBats relied on decades of research, not only on bats but other sciences and disciplines as well. Materials cited in the report include papers on human-elephant conflict and cross-cultural examinations of how India’s population views and values nature.
Though the research work was exhaustive, the team found great gaps in the knowledge of India’s bats. “Population trends were not included for most species, simply because it became clear very quickly that this type of information just isn’t available for Indian bat species, as they have been generally overlooked in research and conservation,” says Mandl.
Farms, Health, & History
The report underscores that bat conservation in India is inseparable from national priorities around food security, organic agriculture, public health, and cultural heritage. “In a country with a burgeoning population and a rapid shift toward organic farming, a key unknown is how we think about bats as pest controllers and how we can leverage their potential —through both insect control and guano as fertilizer, for example,” explains Dr. Rohit Chakravarty, BCI’s India Program Manager.
Historical monuments—many of them managed by the Archaeological Survey of India—emerge as powerful microcosms of what is at stake. In these shared spaces, large bat colonies roost inside structures that are already being conserved for their cultural value, yet bats are often viewed as pests. The report argues that expanding this umbrella of protection to include bats as part of India’s natural heritage is essential and highlights the need for better environmental safeguards as India rapidly invests in sectors like wind energy where impacts on bats remain poorly understood.
One of the key goals is for bats to be seen as a critical part of functioning ecosystems—with governmental back-up and support when it comes to studying and protecting them. “There is always a compromise to be found to enable a peaceful co-existence between bats and humans,” says Mandl.
Fielding the Future
Moving forward, the report establishes several research and conservation priorities, including identifying bat “hot spots,” which can be, among other things, large roosting or nursing colonies and places of high bat species diversity. The authors also want to see greater and more comprehensive “call libraries,” repositories of bats’ echolocation and other calls.
A better understanding of the effects of climate change on India’s bats is also a priority. And more research on bat diets must be done to better understand the effects of urbanization and light pollution. Conservation priorities include building networks of bat conservation stakeholders and increasing public awareness of bats through outreach and social media.
One goal is to inspire science students to pursue the multidisciplinary research priorities developed in the report, as well as more collaboration, which is essential in bat conservation work. Another is that SoIBats will help to inform funding agencies and policy makers in the decisions they make for bat conservation. “What we really need is a network of partners for bat conservation, which we envision and propose in the report as well as a collective of different governmental bodies with which bat conservation intersects,” says Chakravarty.
As the story of bat conservation in India continues to unfold, thousands of bats are poised to take flight each evening into the dusky horizon. As Mandl says, “Connection and collaboration between stakeholders working in the bats’ best interest has never been as important as it is today. The past years have laid the foundations for a bright future for India’s bats, for a united front to protect some of the most undervalued animals on the planet!”
Paul Hormick, author of the environmental newsletter The Green Dispatch, has spent the last 22 years writing about music, food, and the environment.
Wendy K. Probst is the editor of The Bat Pub, and a freelance editor and writer who has devoted her career to working with stellar conservation organizations like Bat Conservation International. She is both driven and anchored by her desire to dream, create, preserve, educate, and empower others.
Isabella Mandl, Ph.D. – Regional Director, Africa & South Asia
Isabella has been working on research projects to support the protection of threatened species on
Madagascar and Comoros since 2013. She is a passionate conservation biologist who, besides
highlighting the importance of working with local communities, believes that understanding animal
behaviour is a key component for successful conservation management. Eager to provide support
where she can, Isabella acts as a mentor for students and early career scientists across Africa.
At BCI, Isabella leads the Livingstone’s fruit bat conservation project. She set up a study on the
species’ movements and is responsible for implementing research and survey protocols, with the
goal of understanding how the fruit bats use the landscape. The insights gained through this project
will be applied in conservation measures, preventing this important species from going extinct.
