From Danielle Brigida
The Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders (EWCL) Bat Team is excited to be working over the course of the next year and a half to facilitate the development of standards on bat guano harvesting in Southeast Asia that will help reduce the impact of harvesting on bat colonies in this part of the world. With the help of Bat Conservation International and an Advisory Committee, our aim is to set the stage for adoption of worldwide guano harvesting standards.
Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders works with participants from conservation NGOs and state and local government agencies from around the world. It is a training and mentoring initiative that brings together twenty emerging leaders in the wildlife conservation field for capacity building and intense training in campaign development and leadership skills, including implementation of a two-year group international wildlife issue campaign.
Meet the EWCL Bat Team:
Danielle Brigida, National Wildlife Federation, Reston, VA, USA
Crystal DiMiceli, Wildlife Conservation Society, Prospect Park Zoo, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Kate Gersh, African Wildlife Foundation, Washington, DC, USA
Mathilde Iweins, Conservation International, Rome, Italy
Ryan Richards, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Washington, DC, USA
Allison Barra Srinivas, Defenders of Wildlife, Washington, DC, USA
We hope to have these standards adopted by the IUCN at the World Conservation Conference in September 2012. Since the beginning of our project in April 2011, our team has conducted initial research on guano harvesting, contacted several international bat experts about our project, and developed a draft set of guidelines. The draft is available here under the products tab, along with templates for cave education modeled on our work in Cambodia.
We’d love your help or advice on this project. Please feel free to email batguanoharvest@gmail.com with any questions.
Read more about our project on Defenders of Wildlife’s Blog:
http://www.defendersblog.org/2011/06/conservation-in-action-harvesting-bat-guano/
