Photographer Dr Lisa Cawthen
“I cannot remember anyone ever teaching me about Tasmanian microbats at school, and I rarely saw them as a child,” says leading Tasmanian bat researcher Dr Lisa Cawthen.
“My only memory of a microbat was in a neighbours shoebox! In fact, when I started studying them, my dad told me there were no bats at our family shack anymore. I put a bat detector out, and recorded bats flying past our shack more than 800 times. We probably watched bats all the time and thought they were birds or moths.”lutruwita/Tasmania is home to eight species of bat. However, our bats are relatively understudied and unknown compared to their mainland counterparts.
Measuring roughly the size of two fingers, the Tasmanian long-eared bat was only recognised as an endemic species to Tasmania in the 2000s. Previous to this, scientists thought it was a species that also occurred on the mainland.
“I think our bats would have got a little more attention had people known sooner we had a bat that occurred nowhere else on the planet except lutruwita/Tasmania,” says Cawthen.
No Tasmanian bat is listed as threatened, despite facing several threats to their survival, and Cawthen feels this may be another reason they are so unknown. “Researchers and the community are time poor, and often those species that are listed as threatened get the most attention and financial support,” she says.
Bats often carry negative connotations, being linked in popular culture to stereotypically malevolent figures such as witches and Count Dracula. However, Lisa Cawthen is on a mission to change that perception. In the past decade she has delivered hundreds of public lectures and “bat walks” to get the community involved and interested in bat conservation.
“People get a buzz searching for bats on a bat walk and they soon discover there is nothing to fear about them,” she says. “I also think I can thank Batman and Batgirl for getting kids excited about bats. Kids are often the focus of bat walks but are the conduit for getting adults excited about bats too. That said, I’ve also done a fair few talks now to seniors and I can say even the elders in our community get a buzz from bats!”
Cawthen is one of few people in recent years to dedicate significant time and focus to the study of Tasmanian bats and is now respected for her expertise on these flying mammals. “I've worked with microbats now for over a decade and I’m still interested in them because there's such a lack of awareness about them in Tasmania, and there's still so much to learn,” she says.
“I still find it fascinating that a microbat, weighing just 4g and fitting into your hand, is a mammal just like us and has all the organs we humans do, but also has the superpowers of echolocation.
“We are making new discoveries [about them] all the time.”
Cawthen is also dedicated to addressing some of the issues threatening bats in Tasmania. This includes the loss of roosting habitat, particularly for breeding. Bats breed in hollow-bearing trees, some of which take more than 100 years to form. Habitat is being lost due to a range of activities including wood harvesting, clearing for agriculture and urban development, road expansion and fire. A single hollow-bearing tree is incredibly valuable to bats and can be competed for by a number of other hollow-using species. While some species will readily use buildings and nest boxes to breed, not all do, meaning there's no man-made replacement for the hollows.
“I am passionate about conserving our hollow-bearing trees which so many species, including our bat species, rely upon,” says Cawthen. “To conserve our hollow-bearing trees, we need everyone to understand their value, and so a big part of doing community walks and talks like bat walks was to engage the community in caring for this limited resource too.”
Other threats to Tasmanian bats include:
Cats, which will take bats during the day when they are asleep in their hollows and are most vulnerable. The education campaign to “keep cats indoors at night to protect wildlife” hasn't been helpful to bats, which are most vulnerable to cats during the day.
Climate change, which is causing tree die-off, increases the risk of wildfire and is potentially bringing new bat species to Tasmania. Over the past 10 years, a ninth bat species has been recorded in Tasmania, which could be our first climate change bat migrant from the mainland. This could be a threat to local bats because of competition for tree hollows.
Wind farms, which can impact bats that collide with the turbine blades and towers, and also through a process of barotrauma.
Dr Lisa Cawthen’s top tips for seeing bats in Tasmania:
- All eight species can be found on kunanyi/Mt Wellington.
- On the Upper Rivulet Track, above the Hobart Rivulet in South Hobart, bats can be seen at eye level showing off their aerobatics as they forage at night.
- Bats prefer to follow a path through the forest. The Pipeline Track at Ferntree is like a “bat highway”.
- Bats are attracted to the warmth of fires and to insects near lights. All Tasmanian bats are insect eaters so if you’re being bothered by mosquitos, moths and beetles there’s a good chance there’ll be some bats around.
- The best time of year to spot bats is February to March, particularly on warm nights with no wind or rain.
Grace Heathcote is a Tasmanian writer. With a background in ecology and conservation, she has worked throughout Australia but has a soft spot for all things Tasmanian. Her writing has been published nationally, including in The Guardian, and her academic publications can be found in peer-reviewed journals such as Conservation Biology and Wildlife Research.
