Text and Photos by Henrylito D. Tacio
Without bats, life won’t be here! Without bats, (there would be) no durian and all those yummy fruits. (Perhaps not too many are aware) that bats pollinate those fruits and an endless list of (other) plants at that.” — Norma Monfort
***
“Now that Davao City has been known to be the country’s fruit capital, and annually celebrates the bountiful fruit harvests during the Kadayawan Festival in August, I believe that the fruit bats should now also get their rightful recognition for making this happen because they are the main pollinators of the fruits.”
The statement came from the mouth Norma Monfort, founder of Monfort Bat Cave and Conservation Foundation Inc. She said those words to the Business Mirror’s senior correspondent Manuel Cayon.
Monfort is talking about her new campaign called “ELEVATED BATtitude,” which will be launched with the Chinese community this coming Saturday, September 26. “Let’s celebrate with our Chinese brothers Mid-Autumn Moon Festival trailblazing a campaign to showcase the moonrise wonders of bats,” she wrote in her facebook account.
She urged everyone to “join and show your appreciation.” She considered the bats as “the unsung heroes,” for they are “the true angels of the night.” She explains: “(They) work while (while the rest of the) humanity sleeps. Bats fly out in thundering rain or at moonrise with baby pups on their breasts into the night to forage for food. Their role in reforestation can’t be matched by tree planting activities.”
From the time the Monfort Bat Sanctuary in the Island Garden City of Samal in Davao del Norte was declared as having the world’s biggest colony of fruit bats, the population has now boomed to 2.5 million.
In 2010, the staff from the Guinness Book of World Records came and found out there were about 1.8 million bats residing in the 245 foot (75 meter)-long cave. That’s a density of 645 bats per square meter.
The following year, an American cave-mapping expedition stumbled upon an unusually high number of pregnant bats in the Monfort bat colony. The bat species does not usually give birth in the first month of the year, making the discovery a “big surprise” and forcing the scientists to halt their mapping project, reports Norma Monfort, owner of the bat sanctuary.
The cause of the bat baby boom is unknown. However, Monfort suspects one factor may be that the cave is protected from the disturbance of human beings as it is now an ecotourism site, which allows their numbers to grow.
Although she lives in Davao City, Monfort comes to her Samal property every now and then. When she’s there, she roams around the property. With a notebook, she writes down the things her staff has to attend to.
“It is tough for me because the property is slightly sloping and I get overwhelmed with the size of the land,” she said. “But I have to do it. This may be the last bastion of bats in the country in the near future.”
When she enters the sanctuary, referring to the bat cave, she literally talks to her “angels” and say, “Hi! Bat Mama is here.” “Everything remains rustic,” she said, “and I just try to use indigenous materials. I also make sure that the bats are fully protected.”
The bats that inhabit Monfort’s place are called Geoffroy’s rousette fruit bats, known scientifically as Rousettus amplexicaudatus.
The fruit bats have been there since the very beginning. She was barely walking when the family would seek shelter inside the cave during the Second World War. Japanese war planes would circle around Samal Island before bombing the adjacent Davao. “Together with some of our neighbors, we would run to the backyard cave,” she said.
Only few bats inhabit the cave at that time. After the war was over, the family built a house near the cave, which was already inhabited by bats. The family moved to Davao and lived there. But during weekends and holidays, she would accompany her father going to the farm, as she called their Samal residence.
When she was already a teenager, Monfort and some of her friends would venture going inside the cave to see the bats. “To me it was a ‘matter of fact thing.’ I don’t recall being amazed,” she admitted. “It was simply; these are bats!”
But growing up and seeing bats made her to take care for these creatures. She describes them as “meek and gentle and keep grooming themselves.” When they come out at night, they go out in an orderly manner like doing a circadian flight. “Instead of fear, I feel being amazed and stand in awe before such a great sight,” she said. “You marvel and become inspired at God’s creation.”
Fortunately, her parents gave the land as her inheritance. Monfort loves the bats that she thought of protecting them from leaving the cave. But with the government’s agrarian reform laws, which limit individual ownership of agricultural land, she may loss the land where the bats are dwelling.
She raised her own funds to bring the respected scientists from Bat Conservation International (BCI) to her cave to advise the best way to ensure continued protection of her bats. Together with BCI and six other government and non-governmental organizations, Monfort signed an agreement protecting the cave as the Monfort Bat Conservation Park in 2006.
Within six months, Monfort also created the Philippines Bat Conservation, an environmental group that reaches beyond her colony to promote conservation of all Philippine bat species.
In 2011, Monfort was honored as one of the “Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund Conservation Heroes.” The award is bestowed to “extraordinary individuals who are passionate about protecting animals and habitats in areas of critical concern.”
