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Take Action

Shop At ACME

Your weekly trip to the local Acme Market can save rare animals on the other side of the world. More >

Build A Bat Box

If you build it, will they come? Maybe, but it could take a while. Bats are very discriminating house hunters. More >

Support Local Farms

Swing by your local farmstand, pick up some fresh vegetables and save a bat. More >

Holy Flying Mammals!

Join Philadelphia Zoo and Heritage Conservancy staffers for an in depth look at how international and local bat conservation efforts are coming together. Strategies currently in place to save critically endangered Rodrigues fruit bats from a small island in the Indian Ocean and those being developed to maintain the little brown bat's status as "the most common bat in North America," are not so different.

In April 2004, a month-long telemetry project was conducted to find out where the bats of Durham Mine, Pennsylvania's second largest bat hibernaculum, were going for the summer. The abandoned iron ore mine located on a Bucks County property managed by the Heritage Conservancy , has now become critical habitat for more than 10,000 bats which hibernate there for approximately six months of the year. That's almost twice as many Pennsylvania bats in one cave as there are Rodrigues fruit bats left in the wild!

Carl Martin, the Heritage Conservancy's director of property management and the Philadelphia Zoo's Rodrigues Fruit Bat Conservation Project leader, Kim Lengel, will detail their respective bat projects to Holy Flying Mammals! participants. Following the presentation will be a chance to visit the Zoo's Rodrigues fruit bats and explore a variety of activities that will bring you closer to the only mammals that truly fly.

To register, or for more information, email Valerie Peckham at peckham.valerie@phillyzoo.org.