Yunlin Villagers Move to Save Golden Bats

Images of the pretty golden bats can be seen painted on walls alongside local country roads from Yun­lin’s bustling Bei­gang Township to Su­qin Village in Shui­lin.

After ten-odd minutes’ driving, Cheng­zheng Elementary School appears ahead. In the school grounds, square black bat nesting boxes hang in the trees. Paper models of golden bats decorate the school corridor, making it look a lot like a bat cave.

In about a month, the renowned Chaotian Temple in Beigang will celebrate goddess Mazu’s birthday, and the town will resound with gongs and drums, and crowds of people. And the golden bats, looking like upside-down bells, will quietly make their spring appearance to breed and deliver good fortune.

The Formosan Golden Bat’s Home has become a popular attraction for tourists since its establishment five years ago.

Scientific records of Formosan golden bats go back more than 150 years, to observations made in 1862 by the British consul in Taiwan, Robert Swinhoe, who was also a naturalist.

However, because specimen collections were incomplete, Formosan golden bats were regarded as a widespread species and received little attention until researchers during the period of Japanese administration compared them with other bats. They identified them as an endemic subspecies, Myotis formosus watasei. But despite this revelation, further study continued only intermittently.

The old Xu Family House in Yun­lin County seems to have become a center of attraction for golden bats in recent years. In 1995, the place even attracted a group of Japanese scholars who came to study the bats.

After golden bats were found around Tainan and Chiayi, two scholars specializing in bat research—Professor Lee Ling-ling of the Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, National Taiwan University, and Professor Lin ­Liang-kong of the Department of Life Science, Tunghai University—have both found that Formosan golden bats are in fact different from Myotis formosus watasei. The nose and wings have dark spots, the fur is a lighter color, and their molar order is also different. After DNA comparison, the researchers were confident in assigning the Formosan golden bats to another subspecies, also endemic to Taiwan: Myotis formosus flavus.

Lin ­Liang-kong notes that currently, Taiwan has 30-plus species of bat. Most of them live their lives in caves or bushes to avoid predators or interference, and a small number of species such as Japanese house bats that sometimes inhabit urban areas tend to hide in dark places, so they aren’t often seen. In fact to see them hanging on eaves or trees like Formosan golden bats, which have no fear of sunlight, would be extremely rare.

Formosan golden bats come to the plains in early April each year. With a body length of about five to six centimeters, they often snuggle up against each other to maintain body warmth, and can be seen suspended from house eaves or broad-leaved trees such as the magnolia or Cuban bast.

Female bats generally deliver their babies between May and July, and hang upside down to breastfeed them in the outer edges of tree foliage where a little sunlight can filter through. After just one month, the young bats are able to follow the adults as they fly off in August and September. They’ve usually disappeared completely by the end of October.

But it’s a mystery where the golden bats go. Scholars speculate that they may hibernate in caves, or, like birds, fly south to avoid the colder weather. A researcher once tried to attach a GPS tracking device to a golden bat, but its body was too small to bear the weight of the battery—so researchers are still none the wiser.

Lin ­Liang-kong says that golden bat numbers reached nearly 1000 during the 1970s, but because of the impacts of land development and pesticide pollution, many habitats were destroyed. The number of golden bats sits currently at a depressing 50–60, so saving the golden bats is an urgent task.

In order to overturn people’s generally sinister impressions about bats, Zhang Hengjia, director of the Formosan Golden Bat’s Home, has held around 100 camps since 2006 to encourage the community to work together for their conservation.

Forty-two-year-old ­Zhang Heng­jia, a graduate of the Department of Special Education at National Tai­chung Teachers College (now National Tai­chung University of Education), would occasionally see golden bats hanging upside down from trees during his return to his hometown as a teacher intern in 1995. A bird lover himself, he applied his birdwatching skills to the golden bats, and has become a leader in the battle to save them.

As well as doing a lot of research to be sure of correctly identifying the golden bats, ­Zhang also went looking for signs of them in parks and schools on weekends and holidays. He even visited Ta­taka Village in the Yu­shan National Park in his quest for hibernating bats.

At the time, Zhen­tou Hill in Yun­lin County had been set aside by the Yunlin County Government for the planned Hu­shan Reservoir, but environmentalists were opposing the development in order to save endangered fairy pittas which nested in the area. In the end, the project was eventually approved with some conditions in 2006.

After failing to secure the fairy pitta habitat, ­Zhang Heng­jia, then director of the Wild Bird Society of Yun­lin and of the Taiwan Sustainable Union, could not help but wonder about the need for a sustainable relationship between man and the environment. People should not just passively enjoy their beautiful natural surroundings, but should also be active in protecting that world.

In order to mobilize people power to safeguard the environment, ­Zhang organized community meetings, hoping to break down local people’s prejudice against the bats.

Since bats generally inhabit dark places, they are often stereo­typed as dark or mysterious—even as symbols of evil. But in traditional Chinese culture, bats symbolize good fortune as the character fu in ­bianfu—“bat”—is a homophone for another fu that means “good fortune.”

In ecological terms, bats help human society remarkably. Most bats eat insects or fruit, and as they forage for food, they indirectly pollinate the crops, while undigested seeds in their feces help to propagate various flora.

Some of the unique physiological traits of bats are quite fascinating. Female Japanese house bats, for example, can store sperm after they mate in September to delay fertilization through winter until the arrival of spring, when conditions become more favorable for becoming pregnant.

As many countries across the globe establish databases for animal genes, the Japanese house bat’s mysterious ability to control its pregnancy is a puzzle that researchers are keen to solve.

Bats look a lot like mice, and their unique silhouette often frightens people away. But bats are really pretty harmless creatures. Through around 100 community talks and workshops over the past six years, the residents of Su­qin Village, who hadn’t been very familiar with bats in the past, have gradually come to recognize ­Zhang’s conception of bats.

Cheng­zheng Elementary has become an excellent “ecological school” for protecting bats. The school’s curriculum integrates bat conservation skills, and they have also set up nesting boxes hanging from school buildings and trees for the Japanese house bats to call home. During their breaks, students go in search of Formosan golden bat droppings in order to trace the bats’ nighttime foraging activities. They have virtually become the vanguard of bat conservation.

As a result of Zhang’s efforts and after three years of hard work, the disused former Public Health Office building in Suqin Village was renovated and transformed into the Formosan Golden Bat’s Home, the third bat museum in Asia, which was completed in 2009. With less than 100 square meters of space, the museum actually attracted 14,000 visitors last year, and has become a new landmark in Shui­lin Township.

The museum has gradually helped to arouse the villagers’ recognition for their bats. Women from the local farms have picked up books again to study up on the bats so they can talk about them to tourists. “In traditional rural areas, temples or areas under large trees are places where villagers often gather to chat or gossip, building community relationships. The museum has played the same role,” says ­Zhang.

Colorful bat paper-cuts decorate both sides of the main entrance to the Formosan Golden Bat’s Home, symbolizing the arrival of good fortune.

The golden bats of Su­qin Village have also attracted the attention of eco-documentary filmmaker ­Zhang Bo­jun.

­Zhang worked as an executive producer at Taiwan Television and Public Television Service before taking over the family business to become a greengrocer, and he still loves using his camera to depict the relationship between people and the land.

After ­Zhang Bo­jun’s debut documentary Falling in Love with Fireflies received good reviews in 2010, he immediately went to visit ­Zhang Heng­jia in Yun­lin, hoping to record the process of saving the golden bats.

In 2012, ­Zhang Bo­jun moved to Su­qin Village and began following the nocturnal routines of the bats. In order to capture the best pictures of the golden bats’ activities, he had to endure the discomfort of endless mosquito bites, waiting for the golden bats to wake up and begin foraging. He even carried his video camera deep into the high mountains in winter, following ­Zhang Heng­jia in search of the bats.

­Zhang’s insistence on not using bright lights to shoot the bats makes his work even more difficult, especially at night. He has even sometimes utilized infrared photography, hoping for interesting night shots.

Yunlin’s spring looks much like spring in any rural area: farmers cultivate the fields, and villagers riding their bikes fade away into the distance along the winding roads. Spring is also the season when the golden bats appear, but their numbers are gradually diminishing.

To encourage the golden bats to reappear, the residents of Su­qin Village have built habitats for the bats, and acted as front-line conservation volunteers. Hoping to revive the past glories of the bat world, the quiet village has also recovered a vitality that hasn’t been seen for a long time.