Shedding Some Light on Bats and COVID-19

Episode description

In today’s episode of Eyes on Conservation, filmmaker Kristin Tieche invites two women in bat conservation who appear in her upcoming feature documentary about bats, The Invisible Mammal. 

Dr. Winifred Frick is the Chief Scientist at Bat Conservation International and an Associate Research Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Frick has studied the ecology and conservation of bats for nearly 20 years and has worked around the globe on bat conservation, including projects in Mexico, Rwanda, Guinea, Fiji, and Jamaica. With nearly 1,400 species, bats are the second most diverse group of mammals on earth, yet many species are threatened by the forces of global change.

Corky Quirk is the founder of NorCal Bats, an organization that provides care for injured

bats and educational programs for libraries, school, nature programs, fairs and other

events throughout the region. Corky has been working intensely with native bats since

2004 and has educated thousands of people. She is permitted through the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife and the USDA to work with injured and orphaned bats, and returning them to the wild. She keeps a captive colony of non-releasable bats for use in education.

How has the coronavirus pandemic disrupted bat conservation? On April 10, 2020, the US Government suspended all bat research across the country, in an effort to curtail the spread of the virus. Frick and Quirk discuss how the new restrictions have affected their work, dispel new myths that have arisen about bats and their connection to coronavirus, and explain why protecting bat biodiversity and bat habitat around the world (and in your backyard) is so important.

Important links:

The Invisible Mammal:

http://www.theinvisiblemammal.com/

Bat Conservation International:

http://www.batcon.org/

NorCal Bats:

http://norcalbats.org/

Yolo Basin Foundation:

http://yolobasin.org/

EcoHealth Alliance:

https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/

Bracken Cave

https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/bats/bat-watching-sites/bracken-cave-preserve.phtml

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