Pemba Flying Foxes Recovering

Critically Endangered Fruit Bat Make Dramatic Return From Brink Of Extinction (November 3, 2008) — A once critically endangered bat species, the ‘Pemba flying fox’, has made a dramatic return from the brink of extinction, according to new research. As recently as 1989, only a scant few individual fruit bats could be observed on the tropical island of Pemba, off Tanzania. Its numbers have since soared to an astounding 22,000 bats in less than 20 years, the new research finds. … > full story

1 Comment

  • andrewt

    The recovery is not as dramatic as the news piece sounds. There was a 1995 count of ~5000 and the authors suggest the population hadn’t changed much in the immediately previous years. Presumably the 1989 population estimate was a massive under-estimate.

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