The recovery of the Kolar Leaf-nosed bat from the IUCN’s endangered Red List is thanks to the scientists like Bhargavi Srinivasulu, who convinced the IUCN to raise the alarm.
In 2016, Hipposideros hypophyllus slid to the bottom of a list that no species wants to be on – the ‘Critically Endangered’ section of IUCN’s Red List. The assessors stated that only 150 to 200 of these creatures remain, all of them confined to a single cave near the village of Hanumanahalli in Kolar, Karnataka.
Today, the bat commonly known as the Kolar Leaf-nosed bat is doing a lot better thanks to the efforts of the zoologists who made the assessment and convinced IUCN to raise the alarm. Bhargavi Srinivasulu is one of them (the other two are Rohit Chakravarty and Chelmala Srinivasulu).
Srinivasulu works in the zoology department of Hyderabad’s soon-to-be century old Osmania University. Like the rest of the buildings in its sprawling campus, this one too is monumental with high cobwebbed ceilings and wide corridors dimly lit by the sun through decorative windows. One of the corridors led me to Bhargavi.
“Since 2003, I have been going to different places to find what kinds of bats are there… are there any new species in the ecosystem? Once we have an idea, we can talk to government officials and come up with action plans for conservation efforts if needed,” said Bhargavi.
The re-discovery of the Kolar Leaf-Nosed Bat is among her most memorable ventures. This particular bat was first documented in 1974, though it was only later correctly identified. It was said to exist in subterranean (underground) caves, but nothing much else about its population nor about its appearance was studied or known.
Striking gold in Kolar
Srinivasulu had a hunch that these bats might be endangered and decided to go looking for them. In 2013, with the help of a grant from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, she was able to pursue this search. She started her survey on the bats’ supposed home ground, the former gold mining district of Kolar in Karnataka.
So how does one go looking for a specific kind of bat? Turns out, all you need to do is ask, and Srinivasulu was by then experienced enough to ask the right people. “I especially approached old people because when they were young they would have gone around with their cattle and they will know many things about the place, unlike the younger generation who go to work to towns and urban areas.”
Most of her interviews involved asking the people: first, if they have seen bats around the area; second, if there are any cave sites around the area, and third, would they lead her there. Through this line of questioning, she and her teammates were led to two subterranean caves in the area – one in Hanumanahalli and the other in Therhalli.
But the real stroke of luck came when Srinivasulu serendipitously met the grandfather of their young local guide. While unwinding at the old man’s shop after a long unsuccessful day searching for the bat in Therhalli, she introduced herself, her team and their mission. He responded with the recollection of meeting scientists just like them many decades ago – around 1974 – when he was a youngster. He directed them to Hanumanahalli, where he knew of a cave with bats; at that point, Srinivasulu reminded me, they had no clarity about what species he was talking about – “he could not know what kinds of bats were there, so we just went knowing that we might find bats there”.
In Hanumanahalli, Srinivasulu saw a huge monolith (made of a single rock) hill ahead of her. She immediately wondered if the hill may have crevices or caves – potential bat homes. At the site, he also noticed suspicious activities afoot. The monolith was dotted with lorries and she soon realised she was witnessing illegal granite extraction. The workers were chipping away at the granite that the hill was made of and loading it onto trucks.
Undeterred, the team of zoologists proceeded up the hill to search for bat roosts. They found a roosting site in a gap between sheets of rock but it was burnt. “It becomes easy to extract a slab of granite if you burn the rock,” she explained. “The roosting site had lots of faecal pellets (poop) but they were covered with soot. It looked like the roost had been abandoned, so we kept climbing.”
That’s when they came across another old man who claimed to have also helped the 1974 team. He said he had gone inside a cave and collected bats and pellets for them. But where was the cave? He pointed down the hill to a tree. They followed his directions and there, nestled between two sheets of granite was what they had been waiting for – a seemingly active roosting site.
“We could smell heavy bat guano (poop). We waited until night, put up a couple of mist nets (a nylon net suspended between two poles used to trap bats), and captured some of these bats.” Srinivasulu and her team became the first ones to ever photograph the Kolar Leaf-Nosed Bat.