Lubee Bat Conservancy

Lubee Bat Conservancy’s vision is to see populations and habitats of fruit and nectar bats protected, restored and enhanced through coordinated conservation, research and education efforts at international, national, regional and local levels. It has seven main field conservation programmes and in Madagascar supports communtiy-based conservation and participatory research as part of the Global Flying Fox Monitoring Initiative.

Since 2003 the Lubee Bat Conservancy has supported a project by Madagasikara Voakajy and ACCE to conserve roosting colonies of the Madagascar flying fox Pteropus rufus in the Alaotra-Mangoro Region. Village residents and ACCE team members make regular checks to monior colony size and any threats. This has led to a large increase in the abundance of the bats in the project site at Ambakaona. Faeces from the roosting bats are collected and germinated in a nursery to provide seedlings for restoration of the land surrounding the roosts.

Common threats to the bats in the study roosts are bushfires, conversion of forest and marsh into agriculture and hunting. In an initiative supported by the Lubee Bat Conservancy in 2005, seven community contracts were established to protect forest fragments with roosting bats. Regular patrols and counts at flying fox roosts are important conservation tools that not only provide useful data but also lead directly to reductions in hunting and other threats.