Fruit bats are the largest flying mammals in the world, and with wings that stretch 1.4 metres from tip to tip, Livingstone’s fruit bat is one of the biggest. However it is also one of the most threatened as its forest home on Anjouan and Mohéli is disappearing fast. Follow the ECDD ecological research team here as they attempt to visit every single of the species’ roosts to assess the status of the population.
The team visit the last of the 16 Livingstone’s fruit bat roosts in Anjouan, finding more evidence of the threats that extreme weather poses to the survival of the species now that so little of its habitat remains. The last … Continue reading
Getting lost in the forest: Bronny and Amelaïd find the landscape changed so much from forest clearance that they struggle to find the roost at Mpage. Here’s the video of their adventures, keep your eyes peeled and you might spot … Continue reading
This week Amelaid and I headed to the village of Dindri on the east of Anjouan to visit the nearby Livingstone’s fruit bat roost. Accompanying us was a local school teacher Toimi who takes a keen interest in the bats. … Continue reading
Bronny and Ishaka’s adventures visiting the Livingstone fruit bat roosts at Limbi and M’romaji: camping in a classroom to escape excited children, balancing over a precipice to get a view of the bats and a noisy roost full of the … Continue reading
This week it felt like we’d got into the rhythm of the surveys a bit more… maybe my legs had toughened up a bit, or maybe it was because we found some better news than in the disappointing first week. … Continue reading
Fruit bats lost and found: in the first weeks of the Livingstone’s fruit bat survey, the ECDD team find disappointing results at Salamani and Ouzini, but discover a second roost at Salamani that has never been counted before.
Our survey of Livingstone’s fruit bats is featured in this gallery on the BBC Nature website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18971346).
The period in the run up to the start of these surveys proved that even the most thorough plans are made to be adjusted and readjusted… first it was me breaking my toe, and then it was torrential rains just … Continue reading
Now that our legs are sufficiently rested after the wet season surveys of the Livingstone’s fruit bat population which finished in January, the ECDD project ecological research team are embarking on surveys in the dry season to complete the evaluation … Continue reading