Saving one of Africa’s most iconic bat species in Zambia!

With your help, Bats without Borders will work with communities in Copperbelt Province in Zambia to understand the causes of human-bat conflict and to help develop solutions that will ensure a peaceful co-existence of bats and people.

The problem
The iconic straw-coloured fruit bat (Eidolon helvum), known as the gardeners of Africa form one n is one of nature’s greatest migration phenomena as millions of individuals travel each year across the African continent. Over ten million individuals congregate in Zambia between September and January, home of the world’s largest fruit bat roost. Unfortunately, their arrival is fraught with conflict as severe deforestation across Zambia forces the bats into smaller areas, including cities and private gardens. Residents of Copperbelt Province cut down roost trees and smoke out bats move them on but also sometimes kill bats directly. As the bat population faces increasing pressures from habitat loss, climate change and persecution, it is of utmost importance to find solutions for a peaceful co-existence between people and bats in Zambia.

The solution
The overarching goals of this project are to 1) reduce and prevent further destruction of bat roosts in Zambia and to 2) support the communities to live alongside bats during their seasonal migration.
To reach this goal, a thorough understanding of the motivations behind residents’ persecution of bats is essential. This will help Bats without Borders in creating effective communication and outreach tools that can foster co-existence between affected communities in the cities Ndola and Kitwe and the straw-coloured fruit bats of the Copperbelt province in Zambia. Bats without Borders aims to understand what residents consider major nuisances caused by the bats and the underlying beliefs (e.g. bats as evil omen, fear of disease transmission, etc.).

The project
To reach these goals and protect the bats in the long-term, Bats without Borders needs your support to fund facilitators (enumerators) that will carry out focus group discussions and household interviews. These contact points and in-depth discussions with local communities will allow us to learn as much as we can from the people that are affected the most. It will also enable us to get an in-depth understanding about the full spectrum of human-bat interactions on-site, to develop an effective engagement and education programme together with the communities and school groups, to learn more about concerns of residents living close to bats and to raise awareness of the benefits that bats provide for the ecosystem, but also of the risks from injuring and handling bats. Our aim is that lessons learned from this project will also be of use for similar situations at the human-bat interface in Africa.