During the pandemic, culling bats became common practice across the world—in a time when their habitats are already under grave existential threat. Bat populations are falling globally. Ironically, scientists theorize that the destruction of bats and their habitats may cause more disease outbreaks. But the impacts of the loss of bat species reach far beyond disease: bats serve crucial ecological roles in the most biodiverse regions of the world.
“For millennia, bats have been associated with evil and darkness. People don’t know them, and it’s easy to fear what you don’t know,” says Adrià López-Baucells, a senior researcher at the Museum of Natural Sciences of Granollers, in Barcelona. “They have an incredible amount of functions that all help to maintain the fragile equilibrium of their ecosystems.”
According to a new paper published in Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, threatened and endangered bat species have thrived in territories where Indigenous peoples have exclusive land rights. Some threatened bat species live entirely in Indigenous territories, where deforestation is lower than even in some protected areas.
“Deforestation is tremendous. It is one of the most important threats to bats … and it’s increasing,” says López-Baucells, one of the co-authors of the paper.
As a result, threatened and endangered bat species are disappearing.
One of these species is the Marinkelle’s sword-nosed bat, which uses its unicornlike horn to swoop insects out of the air. It has been found almost entirely in Indigenous territories.
Night after night in the pitch-black jungle, López-Baucells captures bats in the field around the world. Bats fill important ecological roles based on what they eat. Large-nosed fruit-bats sink their teeth into large, ripe fruit, dispersing the seeds and pollinating plants. Insect-eaters expertly capture disease-bearing bugs, consuming pests by the literal ton. The mouse-eared bats burned in Peru, for example, hunt the mosquitoes that transmit diseases like malaria.
López-Baucells hopes that the data set, which includes a list of bat species and what percentage of their distributions can be found in Indigenous territories, will be used as a tool to make important decisions about conservation with local land managers, policy makers and other stakeholders involving Indigenous groups.
“We wanted to create something that could be brought right to the table where decisions about conservation are made. It’s clear that, for future research and conservation, we need to interact more with [local leaders and researchers] and with Indigenous peoples—not acting as Western researchers alone,” says López-Baucells, “It’s conservation that is born with and from the people that [are] living there.”
Indigenous people are rarely given a voice in public policy. Because of that legacy of neglect and discrimination, some argue that engaging Indigenous people only as conservationists isn’t the right approach.
“We need to acknowledge that Indigenous rights are important for their own sake, independent of their contribution to nature conservation goals,” says Brondizo. Though, broadly, Indigenous people have a unique, symbiotic relationship with nature, he adds that their needs need to be recognized first. “We need to recognize that Indigenous people are diverse and live in different societal contexts, in most cases lacking proper and culturally appropriate access to health and education, as well as a voice in public policies.”
“The southeastern Kayapo border is essentially lawless,” says Barbara Zimmerman, a conservation researcher at the University of Toronto, who directs the Environmental Defense Fund’s contribution to the Kayapo Project. ”The government is actively trying to take over Indigenous land and destroy Indigenous NGOs that fund crucial border protection services. Without them, the Kayapo people would no longer be there…. They would have been wiped out.”
Though Zimmerman reports that most Kayapo have been spared from COVID-19, many other indigenous communities have not. The coronavirus has killed Indigenous people at almost double the rate of other South Americans. Most Indigenous communities have been forced into isolation to contain spread, and outside forces have exploited the opportunity to push further into Indigenous territories.
“It is not just pandemics…. If we don’t change the roots of how humans are treating the planet, not only are pandemics going to keep coming, but we’re going to lose a whole world of animals and plants,” says López-Baucells.
This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
