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From California to Maine, land is being given back to Native American tribes who are committing to managing it for conservation. Some tribes are using traditional knowledge, from how to support wildlife to the use of prescribed fires, to protect their ancestral grounds.
Dec. 11, 2020
The order of animals known as Chiroptera, the bats, enjoys a mixed reputation among humans. I’m putting this politely: They have been calumniated and abused for centuries.
Some people, mainly from the comfort of distance and ignorance, find bats repellent and spooky. Some people fear them, with or without rational grounds. Bats are sometimes slaughtered in large numbers, defenseless at their collective roosts, when people deem them menacing, inconvenient, noxious or desirable as food.
The idea of bat soup or roasted bat may induce cringes in sensitive Western eaters, but that’s no consolation to the tens of thousands of flying foxes (as the largest of the Old World fruit bats are known) that have been legally hunted for meat and sport in Malaysia in recent years. Or to the Mariana fruit bat, pushed toward oblivion not just by habitat loss in Guam and neighboring islands, but also by the introduction of a tree snake that preys upon them and a tradition among the l