Good news for flying fox conservation! In conjunction with recent media coverage highlighting the importance of flying foxes for durian, Peninsular Malaysia’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks have announced that they are taking concrete steps to protect the country’s two flyi
An international team of researchers working in Peninsular Malaysia have found that the giant fruit bats known as flying foxes (Pteropus hypomelanus) are actually important pollinators for the durian (Durio zibethinus) tree, which produces a unique fruit that is highly popular through
North Sulawesi province, Indonesia, is a center for the bushmeat trade, especially of flying foxes of the species Pteropus alecto and Acerodon jubatus. This level of intense consumption is unsustainable in the long-term and will lead to increasing hunting pressure in other provinces,
Last month the SEABCRU was in Mandalay, Myanmar for the second in its series of Network Gap workshop. Prior capacity-building initiatives by two SEABCRU members of the steering committee (Dr Paul Bates of the Harrison Institute, and Dr Tigga Kingston of Texas Tech University) with th
Flying fox conservation is one of the four SEABCRU priorities, and our first global action is to collate information on the current populations and distributions of flying fox species. Researchers from Cambodia from the Institut Pastuer du Cambodge and Fauna and Flora International &
The Philippines is home to more than 74 species of bats of which 54% are endemic to the country. Despite the local, national and international efforts directed towards conservation of wildlife, many bat populations particularly roosting populations of flying foxes are in dramatic decl
Kris Helgen shared with us a new paper evaluating the taxonomic relationships between flying foxes of the Mortlock Islands, a chain of 100 atoll islands, in Micronesia. The authors, led by Don Buden, resurrect the name Pteropus pelagicus to replace P. phaeocephalus and unite P. pelagi
It’s Halloween time again, and around much of the world people are decorating with images of ghosts, vampires, witches, black cats, and, of course, bats. For the superstitious, there may be nothing scarier than the flying foxes of the Philippines, whose 2-meter wingspans make them the
The SEABCRU Flying Fox Workshop in Phnom Penh last week (October 17th-19th) was a great success, with 24 participants drawn from NGOs, universities, ministries and research institutes from Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. We had an intense three days with activities intended to insure
This month brings the SEABCRU Flying Fox Workshop 2013 to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This follows on from last year’s SEABCRU Flying Fox Workshop in Hat Yai, Thailand, which brought experts and practitioners from across Southeast Asia together to work on protocols and methods for monitorin