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Deadly Russian wildfires also bad for bats: UNEP
Pipistrelle bat
Last weekend people in more than 30 European countries went batty. They took off on night walks and participated in other events marking 'European Bat Night,' an annual celebration to raise awareness about these nocturnal flying mammals. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is concerned about Europe's migratory bats, particularly following this summer's deadly forest fires in Russia. The wildfires were concentrated in western Russia which is an important habitat for the country's 30 bat species. To learn why bat conservation is so vital, UN Radio's Elena Vapnitchnaia spoke to Andreas Streit, head of UNEP's EUROBATS programme.
STREIT: Russia has a very rich variety of bat species that do not occur in the same number of species in all European countries. Thirty different species in one particular country is quite a lot for European circumstances.
VAPNITCHNAIA: And what exactly is the danger for bats from forest fires?
STREIT: A loss of habitat for bat species that roost in trees, but also the loss of prey. In these huge fires all insects of course got killed, so in that region that is affected there is a dramatic loss of prey for the bats and this will pose a problem as well.
VAPNITCHNAIA: How important are bats for the ecosystem? Why the focus on them and the whole department, I guess, or whatever this is, at UNEP focusing on bats specifically? What is their importance for the survival of ecosystems?
STREIT: First of all I would like to highlight that EUROBATS is probably the smallest UN agency with 2.5 staff members, so don't imagine a huge bureaucracy. But to come back to your question, European bats, which are all with one exception in southern Europe insect-eating bats, play a very important role in the ecosystem because they are the only natural control of night-active insects that otherwise could only be controlled with pesticides, which is again bad for nature. And this concerns a wide range of night-active insects. Some of them are also harmful to agriculture or forestry, not only annoying for us humans but to illustrate the dimension: one single bat can eat up to 5,000 mosquitoes per night. And this explains their important role in the ecosystem as natural pest control.
VAPNITCHNAIA: I see.
STREIT: In other regions of the world where fruit eating bats are occurring, these play an important role as pollinators because they are spreading the seed of plants and have an equally important role in the ecosystem. But in Europe we mainly have insect-eating bats and I explained why they are important...besides the fact that they are really fascinating animals.
VAPNITCHNAIA: (Laughs). Yes, I was going to say that adds a new dimension to the usually unpleasant image of bats. So I will think of them differently now!
STREIT: Yes, and once you see them from close, actually they are very cute. The image dates from mediaeval times where bats were related to evil and like messengers of the devil, or whatever. So in past times there was a lot of superstition about bats. But once you really look at them more closely you will find out that they are really cute animals, very social animals, that they don't do harm to anyone, and that even they are very important for the ecosystem.
Andreas Streit, Executive Secretary UN Environment Programme/EUROBATS, which works to conserve bat populations. EUROBATS says vampire bats, which consume blood, are not found in Europe.
Producer: Elena Vapnitchnaia
Duration: 3'05"
