The tropical climates of Southeast Asia see some of the richest biodiversity in the world. Yet, the rapid development and land use of Southeast Asian nations is putting much of the region’s fauna at risk. Constituting up to half of all mammal species in the tropical rainforest ecoregions, bats are a crucial part of this diversity and they are also under great threat due to the industrial development of Southeast Asian nations.

Should rates of deforestation persist, it is estimated that as much as 40% of bat species are predicted to be extinct by the end of this century. As of now, nearly half of bat species are of conservation concern. In Singapore alone, it is estimated that since colonial times, about 72% of the species are now locally extinct.

Forest-dependant bats are particularly affected by the continued development of SEAsian nations. In Peninsular Malaysia, 40% of documented horseshoe bats (rhinolophid taxa) have already been lost and almost half of the surviving microbats species are locally endangered. It is also projected that the local extinction rates of their megabats is about 60%.

Despite the ecological importance of bats and the threat they are under, much of the general masses are sadly still unaware of their plight. They remain under-represented and misunderstood in the world of conservation. It is only with more recent technology that the surveying of bats have begun to be carried out with greater attention. Due to their ability to fly great distances and the adaptibility of a few species of bats, they were often overlooked in biodiversity assessment procedures and thought to be at low risk of extinction.

Currently, the conservation status of 28% of the world’s known bat species is not understood. Nearly 200 of them are listed as “data deficient” in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened species and another 166 of them have never been evaluated for extinction risk. Moreover, the population trends of nearly half the world’s bat species are still unknown to us today.

All these just goes to show the lack of awareness that we have regarding bats. More alarmingly, recent studies has revealed that bats are at a greater risk than we have thought. The low reproductivity of bats coupled with the negative sentiments surrounding them could prove fatal for the bat population, many of which are already declining.