Many years ago the Malaysian Bat Conservation Research Unit developed an outreach role-play activity called “Saving Batu Caves” (which you can download from this page). In the activity, participants represented different stakeholders, from conservationists to a limestone extraction company, invested the fate of Malaysia’s famous Batu Caves and vigorously debated the caves’ future. The caves have great cultural value, but are also home to many species of bats (10-15).
It looks like I may need to add a new “antagonistic” stakeholder to the activity — I was dismayed to see this press article in the Star Online, reporting that a local tourist company had hired a pest control company to get rid of bats from some of the caves. More heartening however, was that the response from Friends of Batu Caves and it will be interesting to see how the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (PERHILITAN in the article) responds. If anyone picks up further news, please let me know so we can post updates.
Bat killing Batu Caves (pdf of article)
