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Flushing, NY, July, 16, 2024\u2014ºì¶¹ÊÓƵ researcher Joanna Coleman, has co-led the first comprehensive study of the international ornamental trade in wild bats and has found that one species is potentially threatened by sales of taxidermied specimens to consumers in the United States in online marketplaces, especially eBay and Etsy. The study, Dying for d\u00e9cor: Quantifying the online, ornamental trade in a distinctive bat species, Kerivoula picta<\/em><\/a>, published July 9 in the European Journal of Wildlife Research<\/em>, focuses on the painted wooly bat Kerivoula picta<\/em> (K. picta<\/em>) a tiny, insect-eating, increasingly commodified species from South, East, and Southeast Asia. It is marked by unusually striking orange fur and black and orange wings. Working within a global supply chain that begins with the (most likely illegal) hunting of bats in \u201csource countries\u201d where they live, U.S. vendors import K. picta,<\/em> marketing and selling the framed and mounted bodies online as home d\u00e9cor, jewelry, and personal ornaments.<\/p>\n Coleman\u2014a Queens resident, who was born in Montr\u00e9al\u2014is an assistant professor of biology at ºì¶¹ÊÓƵ and co-chair of the Bat Trade Working Group, part of the Bat Specialist Group within the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and its Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC). She co-led the study with Nistara Randhawa, a UC Davis data scientist and epidemiologist.<\/p>\n \u201cThis team of scientists has conducted groundbreaking research on the online trade in wild bats, which is largely avoiding official oversight,\u201d says ºì¶¹ÊÓƵ President Frank H. Wu. \u201cOur faculty at ºì¶¹ÊÓƵ have long been known for their innovative work in conservation biology and their support for sustainable development\u2014areas where Professor Coleman is making significant contributions in partnership with scientists and institutions in several countries. This study rings the alarm for biodiversity, showing us that threats to wildlife have an international scope, benefit from international scientific collaboration, and must be addressed without delay.\u201d<\/p>\n Bats, which are the second most species-rich order of mammals, play vital ecological roles around the world\u2014as pollinators, insect eaters, and seed dispersers. However, they are often killed as \u201cpests\u201d that eat crops, are harvested for medicinal purposes, and suffer from ongoing habitat loss. Increasingly, bat populations are also in decline due to the global wildlife trade. In 2020 the IUCN named K. picta<\/em> a near-threatened species on its Red List of Threatened Species, with trade as the suspected main cause of an estimated population decline of 25 percent.<\/p>\n Coleman believes the threat is urgent. \u201cIt\u2019s very important to remember that our data-collection period was only three months. Meanwhile this is going on on dozens of websites and in physical shops worldwide, so it\u2019s only the tip of the iceberg. I\u2019m genuinely concerned that what might be happening is that the hunters are going out into the habitats where the bats live and systematically removing every single individual that they encounter. There\u2019s a risk that the population could be depleted. We need to do something immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n As the authors point out, the scale of exploitation could expand, endangering K. picta<\/em> even further. They suggest that imports of K. picta<\/em> should be subject to greater enforcement of wildlife laws in the United States. The Lacey Act forbids importation of any illegally harvested wildlife. Because taxidermied wildlife pose a potential biosecurity hazard, importers also should obtain a permit from the Centers for Disease Control. Moreover, the global scale of the trade suggests the need for international action. The authors recommend that K. picta<\/em> be reassessed and listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a multilateral agreement that would prohibit its transboundary trade. The research team is already conducting a follow-up study in Vietnam that will explore the supply chain in greater depth, potentially supporting a recategorization of K. picta<\/em> at the next CITES conference in 2025.<\/p>\n Further, the study finds a pattern of misleading appeals to conscious consumption. About 20% of sales copy implies or promises that the dead bats are ethically sourced\u2014meaning that they were bred in captivity, died of natural causes, and were not harmed. The scientists reject these claims, arguing that because there is no captive-breeding program for insect-eating bats, in practical terms they must be taken from the wild, violating wildlife laws in the source countries. Equally important, K. picta<\/em> reproduces at a very slow rate\u2014removing individuals from the breeding population has unsustainable impacts on the future of the species. Finally, it would not be possible to find enough bats who died from natural causes in the wild and remained in saleable condition to grow this trade ethically.<\/p>\n The trade in K. picta<\/em> thrives under the radar, in both source and destination countries, even as it expands into new markets (such as the goth subculture targeted in nearly 15% of K. picta<\/em> listings). This study relies on a resourceful multimethod approach to uncover a trade somewhat hidden behind private entities and lack of robust official monitoring (for example, attempts to use the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service\u2019s database on wildlife imports were not fruitful as its data do not identify bats in the genus Kerivoula<\/em> to the species level). The team\u2019s research strategy combined semiautomated searches and manual data collection of online marketplaces, text analysis, and statistical data analysis. The researchers quantified the trade over a three-month period from October 2022 to December 2022. They found 856 listings for bats, of which 215\u2014representing 284 individuals\u2014were for K. picta<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cConservation biology has core tenets\u2014namely, that biodiversity is good, and that animals have the inherent right to exist independently of whatever the species do that benefits humans,\u201d reflects Coleman. \u201cHaving caused this biodiversity crisis that we\u2019re in, which rivals any of the previous five mass-extinction events, it\u2019s our responsibility to fix it.\u201d She adds, \u201cThis is the most concrete and tangible project that I\u2019ve ever been involved in. It\u2019s already resulted in a petition to add Kerivoula picta<\/em> to the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and there\u2019s now a petition in Australia to ban the import of taxidermied bats. It\u2019s picking up steam, and that is tremendously rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n The study identifies an emerging supply chain extending from source countries (like Indonesia and others in the region) to Europe and North America\u2014\u201ca considerable movement of biodiversity into the global North,\u201d says Coleman. Though K. picta<\/em> is a solitary species, harder to find than bats that live in colonies, it represents a substantial one-quarter of the online listings of bats. The study also shows that eBay and Etsy dominate the online sale of bats, with potentially amplified impacts due to vendors\u2019 links to social media like Instagram. Most online sellers of bats are in the United States; vendors in numerous states sell the taxidermied bodies of K. picta,<\/em> with pricing affected by extras like artistic framing, mounting onto hair ornaments, and similar embellishments.<\/p>\n Lead author Coleman is an ecologist who has published widely, including as coeditor of Urban Bats: Biology, Ecology, and Human Dimensions <\/em>(Springer). Before coming to ºì¶¹ÊÓƵ in 2021, she taught at the National University of Singapore and the University of Calgary in Qatar. She holds a BSc in environmental biology from McGill University, an MSc in renewable resources from McGill, and a PhD in urban wildlife ecology from the University of Calgary. Of the five working groups of the Bat Specialty Group within IUCN SSC, she co-chairs two, including the Human Dimensions Working Group.<\/p>\n Second author Nistara Randhawa (University of California at Davis) has now joined the Bat Trade Working Group. All other authors were already members of the Bat Trade Working Group of IUCN SSC. They are Joe Chun-Chia Huang (National Taiwan Normal University), Tigga Kingston and Abigail L. Rutrough (Texas Tech University), Benjamin P. Y.-H. Lee (Singapore Botanic Gardens), Joy M. O\u2019Keefe (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Vu Dinh Thong (Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology), Susan M. Tsang (American Museum of Natural History), and Chris R. Shepard, co-chair of the Bat Trade Working Group and executive director of the Canadian non-profit Monitor Conservation Research Society. This research was funded by the Animal Welfare Institute in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n -30-<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16.0″ _module_preset=”default” text_text_color=”#000000″ text_font_size=”12px” header_text_color=”#000000″ header_font_size=”22px” header_2_font_size=”19px” background_color=”#EFEFEF” width=”100%” custom_padding=”18px|26px|18px|26px|true|true” global_colors_info=”{}”]About ºì¶¹ÊÓƵ<\/strong> ºì¶¹ÊÓƵ enjoys a national reputation for its liberal arts and sciences and pre-professional programs. With its graduate and undergraduate degrees, honors programs, and research and internship opportunities, the college helps its more than 20,000 students realize their potential in countless ways, assisted by an accessible, award-winning faculty. Located on a beautiful, 80-acre campus in Flushing, the college has been cited by Princeton Review as one of America’s Best Value Colleges for four consecutive years, as well as being ranked a U.S. News and World Report Best College and Forbes Magazine Best Value College thanks to its outstanding academics, generous financial aid packages, and relatively low costs. Visit our homepage<\/a> to learn. more\u200b. ºì¶¹ÊÓƵ Biologist Finds That Global Trade in Bats Sold on eBay and Etsy for Decorative Use Reveals Imminent Threat to Species Survival in First Major Study \u2014International team of scientists recommends legal protection for species; rejects claims that specimens are ethically sourced and alleges their removal from the wild violates wildlife laws in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"page_category":[],"wf_page_folders":[],"class_list":["post-5106","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5106"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5118,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5106\/revisions\/5118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"page_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page_category?post=5106"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=5106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nºì¶¹ÊÓƵ produces more education graduates who become principals, teachers, and counselors for the city\u2019s public schools than any other college in the metropolitan area. The college contributes to the local talent pool as a powerful economic engine and a leader in tech education. Students from across the country and around the world are attracted to study at the Aaron Copland School of Music. Its renowned faculty and alumni include nationally recognized composers, conductors, and performers who have received over 100 Grammy Awards and nominations.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/span><\/strong>718-997-5593
\nmaria.matteo@qc.cuny.edu<\/a>
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