Bats are often misunderstood and persecuted. Sometimes bats are depicted as eerie, ominous and weird animals on TV. Some programs are thought to be filmed in a way which may disturb breeding or hibernating colonies. When we think the program is harmful to bats, we lodge protests with TV stations asking for answers. In 2009 we made a guideline for broadcasters and sent it to all major TV stations.
Recently, bat walks and bat talks are becoming popular across the nation and we send instructors to conduct these events. We have made bat event guidelines.
In 2005 four junior high school students died of carbon monoxide poisoning at the site of a former air-raid shelter in Kagoshima as they burn a bonfire. This has created a wave of government negligence bashing of care and custody regarding former shelters nationwide. After the incident many local governments started to cover up abandoned mines, tunnels and underground shelters. But these are valuable roost sites for cave dwelling bats and some have historic value. BSCJ presented a petition to preserve shelters as bat roosts and historic assets towards municipalities and proposed installation of bat gates.
Articles from Asahi Shinbun about bats at the new Ishigaki airport site. Sep. 3..2008 (in Japanese)
→The first half of the article（PDF, 1002KB）、 →The last half of the article（PDF. 287KB）