DAVAO CITY—A bat conservationist here, known globally as “bat mama,” was one of the few women featured in an international magazine on bat conservation to coincide with the international women’s month. The Echo, a magazine of the US-based Bat Conservation International, featured on its March 24 edition Norma Monfort of Samal Island here as among the remarkable “Women in Bat Conservation.”
The magazine presented the road taken by Monfort, a music graduate majoring in piano, to bat conservation after scientists, Dr. Merlin D. Tuttle and Dr. David Waldien, conducted a scientific survey in 2006 of the Monfort Bat Cave. They found out that only the caves in the Monfort estate, among the many caves on Samal Island resort, have housed the world’s largest population of Geoffroy’s Rousette fruit bats (Rousettus amplexicaudatus).
“All the caves on Samal Island and the region were practically empty due to human disturbance except for the Monfort Cave.
So the scientists urged the Monfort family and the environmental groups supporting the family’s efforts to conserve the caves,” she said. From then on, the lessons she learned on bat conservation led her to give “credit to where it is due” to the bats on reforestation and efforts against climate change.
“No amount of man-made reforestation efforts from both private and government sectors can match the reforestation bats do every night to save the remaining natural habitat for the Philippine Eagle. So much talk and money is being spent on climate-change conferences but everyone continues to overlook the bat’s contribution in mitigating climate change as major agents of reforestation,” she said.
In August last year, Monfort “started the campaign to get the public and the government to give credit to where credit is due. With the annual festival celebrating a bountiful harvest the government gives focus to tourism and it celebrates the region’s endangered Philippine Eagle as the center and icon.”
“Without the bat there will never be bountiful harvests and without the bat there will be no eagle to save,” she said.
Her active education and awareness-raising campaigns would be pressed further among policy-makers “so bats can continue playing their roles in the pollination of key economic fruits in the region, such as durian and wild banana.” So far, the Department of Tourism has designated the Monfort Bat Cave as a key ecotourism destination site. Afterward she immediately founded the Philippine Bat Conservation Inc.
“No doubt about it. The Geoffroy’s Rousette fruit bat is my favorite because it is the splitting image of my Dachshunds, who gives me so much joy with their unconditional love. What was then estimated in 2006 to be already a population of 1.8 million Rousette bats makes it hard not to love them because, every night, they leave but, at dawn, they all come back,” she said.
Monfort said, unknown to people, the unpopular and misunderstood bat in spirituality, are symbols of birth and rebirth.
“Their upside-down position signifies the need to transform, to let go of old habits or ways of life and to adopt new ones though difficult and painful. As nocturnal creatures, they guide people through the darkness of confusion, helping us face our fears and granting us the gift of clear hearing and of listening between the lines. And, because as mammals that nurse their young and can fly, the bat is the symbol of motherhood,” she said. A new interest cropped up lately after she discovered an albino among the bats, calling her “Blancabella.”
“[She’s] one rare white albino bat, who appears to select tour groups from time to time. This beautiful muse is destined to educate, amaze and entertain generations to come through books, or a documentary film, perhaps,” she said. In her note to an e-mail notification to friends about her inclusion in The Echo magazine, Monfort said, “its very humbling to be included among real scientists, researchers and people in the field.”
“My advice and my plea is for people to simply understand and take more interest in this specie, to learn how important they are to our environment and our own survival, to respect them and learn to say “Thank you bats for all the invaluable work you do, rain or shine, every night, while humanity sleeps.”