DAVAO CITY—The owner of the bat conservation estate on Samal Island off the Davao Gulf is considering the filing of a bio-piracy case against a US biologist-researcher over the inaction of the latter to heed the demand to hand back all the data he got from the short-lived research in the bat caves.

Norma Monfort, owner of the Monfort Eco-Tourism Estate in Barangay Tambo, Island Garden City of Samal, said she would send the final set of communications demanding anew that Dr. Rick Sherwin, a biology professor at the Christopher Newport University (CNU) in Virginia, USA, hand back all the unfinished research findings and the video recordings that she said may constitute proprietary ownership of the estate.

She said the board of directors of the Monfort Bat Cave and Conservation Foundation has also told and authorized her to initiate the actions to compel Sherwin to hand back the materials and to pay the legally mandated fees required from foreigners conducting researches on Philippine flora and fauna species.

Demand for payment, materials

IN a board meeting on Friday, Monfort said the conservation foundation agreed to write Sherwin first to demand from him again for the both the payment of legal research fee and access fee stipulated under Philippine laws, or to demand from him to hand over whatever written data and video footage taken at the bat caves during the two occasions that they were here.

“We would write the chancellor of the school where he worked, and if these two actions would still be ignored, we would file whatever case related to his actions here, maybe biopiracy as what the board had been warning about last year,” she said.

A member of the board, Elpedio Peria, an environmental lawyer, is a prominent consultant of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources national office on wildlife conservation.

“We hope that the last legal action would now prevent Sherwin from further conducting any research in other Asian countries and to prevent him from soliciting donations to whatever project he may pursue using the data he collected from us here,” she told the BusinessMirror.

Monfort said the American scientist had repeatedly ignored her demand since last year shortly before Sherwin’s two student researchers arrived in July for a supposed six-month on-site study of the fruit bats, which would have been the world’s first in-depth research of bats.

In their series of communications last year through e-mail exchanges, Monfort said she had repeatedly informed Sherwin that she had adjusted the billing rate from their earlier agreement, and that the research would only entail payment of board and lodging of the CNU student researchers under Sherwin and the other incidental expenses in the course of the research.

“I was naïve then that such a law exists requiring foreigners to pay fees on access and research to the country’s wildlife,” she said.

It was the foundation’s board which reminded her immediately of such requirements before the student researchers arrive to conduct their formal research, scheduled for July up to December last year.

“I e-mailed him about it, to correct our earlier agreement and the readjusted rates, but until October when he [Sherwin] came here, he did not respond to those corrections, and he never filled up the forms I sent him,” she said.

Sherwin and Monfort did not also discuss the new working and payment agreement that already included the mandated research and access fees when Sherwin arrived in the country in the middle of October to check on the progress of the research of his students.

Appallingly high rates; travel advisory

BEFORE he left, though, he said he was dismayed by the change in the billing rate he and Monfort had earlier agreed upon in May.

He also pulled out his two students four months into the research on the reproductive, nocturnal feeding and grooming habits and pattern of the bats. He said their pulling out was due to the travel advisory in the Philippines issued by the US government—that warned US citizens of the risks of terrorist activities in southern Philippines, particularly in Mindanao, and that travelers should exercise extreme caution if traveling in some parts of the island.

In one of his official correspondence with the staff of the bat foundation which Monfort furnished the BusinessMirror, Sherwin described the new rates as “appallingly high” and that he would “never have continued any work at Monfort for the new rates that Norma reset the costs to.”

“I made no attempt to avoid anybody while on site and am disgusted by the suggestion. Clearly I am viewed as a source of revenue and not as a collaborator, so I am approaching this project with that mindset, that I am a paying customer of Monfort and have paid an extremely high price for the data I collected,” he said.

As for the research agreement, he said, “My original agreement with Norma [that she prepared and has a copy of], includes the research fee in the monthly costs to which she and I agreed,” he said.

But Monfort disagreed, saying that he was mum about the research and access fees.

“In all my naiveté, I allowed these people to take advantage of what we have as a nation of rich wildlife resources,” she said.

She believed that it was due to the mandated rates that Sherwin tried to elude and had his researchers pulled out “in the guise of that [US] travel advisory.”

Sherwin said he would “not be doing any more work at Monfort as I simply cannot afford it and I am increasingly annoyed by all of this.”

“I will send results of the research when analyses are completed, but since I am a customer and not a collaborator, there will be no more resources coming from me to the cave,” he added.

Wealth of scientific discovery

SHERWIN first came to the Monfort bat caves in January last year through the Philippine Bat Conservation. Monfort said Sherwin have taken valuable infrared footage at the interior of the caves, and had mentioned about recreating a cave that would invite other bats to habitate in it.

The American scientist told a press interview in October last year that the artificial bat caves, called chiroptorium, would be easier to make following their discovery of the substances present in the walls of Monfort caves “which attracted the bats to scratch and feed on them.”

He also intimated to Monfort about the progress of his discovery.

“You will be surprised what we found out will tell you [about the cave walls],” Monfort quoted Sherwin as saying, on their first conversation when the scientist came in October.

Monfort said, “That part alone of his discovery is already a wealth of scientific discovery that he must share or hand over to us because it is the property of the foundation.”

Guinness Book recognition

IN 2010, the Guinness Book of World Records accorded Monfort bat caves with the distinction of hosting the largest concentration of the Rousetteus amplexicaudatus, or fruit bats.

Monfort delineated more than 5 hectares of the Monfort estate in the southern tip of Samal Island in southern Philippines to her Monfort Bat Cave and Conservation Foundation Inc.

She said the public interest generated by the conservation program she started in 2007 has sent students and scholars to the Monfort Bat Caves. “They can use it for their study and researches, and I think we are on the right path.”

The enthusiasm was shared by Nina Fascione, executive director of the Bat Conservation International, which set up office in Austin, Texas.

“It’s fantastic to see many people come together from different countries to help spread the message to work together for the bats,” she told the BusinessMirror when she witnessed the Philippine side of the global launch of the International Year of the Bats last year.

She said it was time for bird advocates to push aggressively the mainstreaming of bat conservation among governments.

At least 115 governments have already signed the UN convention that aimed at conserving endangered terrestrial, marine and avian migratory species worldwide.

“Not all of these countries have their own bat conservations or significant bat population,” she said, citing Asia as having several well-organized and managed bat conservations compared to the other continents.

“Latin America also has some well-organized programs too, but not much in Africa and other continents,” she said.

Europe has its own treaty administered by the Eurobats and the continent has identified 53 species of bats that it pledged to protect through legislation, enforcement, education, conservation measures and international cooperation.

The Philippines has its Philippine Bat Conservation organization but the more known conservation program was focused on the Philippine Eagle, based in the northwestern outskirts of Davao City.

The Monfort Bat Caves consisted of three caves with five openings, carved out from the promontory like big holes at the ground—one measuring 10 meters by 5 meters, and one measuring 5 meters in diameter. Each cave was fenced off by bamboo poles to keep off beachgoers from exploring the caves.