Today is "Bat Appreciation Day", a day for remembering the beneficial effects that bats bring our ecosystems and for introducing the species that live in our environment. Bats are the usual suspects, unjustly blamed for pandemics and little appreciated for the role they play in the ecosystem in controlling pests. We recommend you watch the Humans and Bats video made by the Museu de Granollers. 

We live in a global ecosystem, where relations within the ecosystem are complex, every time we attack it we have to pay the consequences. Our health depends on the health of this great ecosystem. Monitoring fauna is a tool for analysing its health, bio-indicator species are the thermometer that shows us its illness, and conservation is the treatment for that illness.

Here at the Barcelona Zoo Foundation we are working with the Museu de Granollers under the "Programme for monitoring bats in Catalonia" (http://www.ratpenats.org). By providing data from several monitoring stations, this platform enables us all to collaborate by helping to monitor these inhabitants of our environment, who are as important as they are unknown.