Special Report: The Bat Man of Boracay

(Large flying fox (Pteropus vampyrus), largest flying fox in terms of wingspan in the Philippines-HJDGarcia/funded by Haribon Foundation's Threatened Species Program (TSP) with support from Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF)

By Jun N. Aguirre/Paul Icamina
Internews and Features

The night creatures could impact of the resort’s future.

BORACAY Island – Come dusk, like clockwork, bats used to emerge in droves from the bowels of caves deep in the forests and in some shoreline caverns.

The daily ritual comes rarely these days as resorts and housing developments spread to the innards of this premium tourist playground.

Bat habitats in Boracay are threatened and, as a result, could impact on the future of what’s left of this island’s forest cover, according to Maria Renee Lorica of Haribon Foundation, a convervation group.

Bats play a crucial role in the local ecosystem, feeding the ground with rich guano and seeds that grow into trees and vegetation. As such, she said, they generate new forest growth, particularly in Boracay and Northwest Panay.

Lorica, of Haribon’s Threatened Species Program, is documenting the patterns of roost site of bats and flying foxes in the island.

Human activities in disturbed areas like this resort island, she said, have significant effects on wildlife. But little is known on the specifics, she added.

“We will be investigating one aspect of the ecology, the roost,” she said.

Roost site characteristics – such as vegetation, topography, wind exposure and the degree of human disturbance – will be recorded for each roost site in Boracay.

Results will pinpoint the characteristics of a preferred roost site. Recommendations for habitat restoration will then be forwarded to the developers in the area for a possible ecotourism scheme that includes bat-watching.

“This way, a compromise is reached by the developers and the welfare of the bats,” Lorica said.

“Conservation measures will not only be done in the day roost but also in the feeding grounds in the forests of Northwest Panay,” she continued. “Intensive education campaigns will be made in identified critical barangays with the help of local organizations and the academe,” she added.

Filipino wildlife biologist Harvey John Garcia, who heads the Haribon group, said the study have found new species of bats which need further study.

These species need urgent conservation measures from local governments, said Garcia who one could say is the Bat Man of Boracay.

Garcia, Lorica, Mylanar Sualog, Lara Stephanie Tajanlangit and Philip Aviola were commissioned to undertake a three-month survey in Boracay and Mindoro by Haribon and the Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund.

“Four species of the yet undescribed Mindoro Flying Fox were caught in Mt. Siburan, Bgy. Batongbuhay in Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro,” Garcia said. “One species could be the smallest Philippine Flying Fox because of its size and weight.”

Garcia said hunting, poaching and slash-and-burn farming contribute to the extinction of this species, adding that the local government in Mindoro has no ordinance protecting the bats.

“It has only been recorded from patches of low-land forest that has signs of disturbance in Anahawin River in Mt. Iglit-Baco and recently in Mt. Siburan,” he said.

The researchers interviewed 32 hunters from seven barangays of Sablayan, Mindoro. They hunted bats as a hobby or for food.

“Air gun is commonly employed for hunting but some are also using aboriginal tools such as a thorn club and tree snares. There are no existing ordinance that prohibit the hunting of the bats,” Garcia said.

“Hunters do not distinguish between the kinds of bats they hunt, whether it is common, endemic or endangered,” he said.