Bat Release Fest in Feldman Ecopark, 7 April 2013

7 April 2013 Kharkov Bat Group with International Beneficent Fund “Fund Alexander Feldman” in Feldman Ecopark organizated solemn release of saved during winter bats!

7 April 2013 in Feldman Ecopark took place unusual bat event – spring release of 190 bats of 4 species which were saved during winter 2012/2013. Many people took part in this event, among them the most active were young biologists of Kharkov zoo and Feldman Ecopark.  Some of young biologists feed bats during winter in the frame of bat rehabilitation program. Bats fly away to the Kharkov forest-park where they probably will find summer roosts and insects for food.

From year to year number of bats found in the city is rising. Thus keeping them in home condition become more and more difficult. But we hope that  the first in Ukraine Bat Rehabilitation Center will be opened soon.

The conception of the Center will be not only bat rehabilitation work, but also active interaction people with bats in order to realize that every of us can held wild animal survive and live in harmony near by.

Due to dramatically decrease of natural habitats, bats are forced to live in towns and cities. The heterogeneous urban grounds may represent islands of roosting and foraging habitats for some bats. Kharkiv city is second largest city in Ukraine with 1,5 million population. Five species of bats are known in Kharkiv. Single findings of bats in Kharkiv were known from the beginning of 20th century. From 1990es bats have been regularly found in city. The most numerous groups of bats are found in two large buildings placed in city centre (Karazin Kharkiv National University (KKNU) and Gosprom building) where about several thousands of bats hibernate each year. The Kharkiv hibernation group of bats is the biggest in Ukraine. The number of findings of bats strongly increases year after year, from 150-200 bats in 2000-2003 up to 1300 bats were recorded in 2011.

Bats can’t foresee threats from the city. During the autumn migration several hundreds of bats get into “window traps” of buildings of the city. Specific construction of windows works like “mortal trap” for bats. In winter bats live in deep crevices in building’s walls. During hibernation bats woke up and change hibernation places because of man-caused disturb and therefore exhaustion of fat reserves. Townspeople are afraid of bats and frequently don’t know what to do with bat. They kill bats or throw them into the street. Very commonly bats are found in winter lying on the snow. In this cases bats are weaken and vulnerable.

Each year we pick up several hundreds of bats in our Kharkiv city. But not all bats could be saved and returned to nature (often hardly injured or died bats). In winter we compelled to keep all found bats at home in stable temperature conditions. But percent of died bats vary from 25 to 50%. Real problem for bat survival in winter time is fat reserves replenishment. This is possible if feed bat with insects till it reach high and stable weight (it is known for each species). Bats can eat up to one third of it’s weight at once. Thus feeding is key moment of rehabilitation process.

Photo by: Anna Gyn

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