Fruit Bats are hanging on trees in Bat Pagoda.

This project will try to understand what the bats’ situation in the community. The number of bats here are reducing time by time till now. There are two kinds of bats in the Bat Pagoda, first one, it is the Large Flying Fox, Pteropus vampyrus (Linnaeus, 1758) and second one, it is Lylei Flying Fox, Pteropus lylei (Anderson, 1908). Number of Pteropus vampyrus is very small in the Pagoda, it is around 50 individuals and Pteropus lylei is around 2,000- 2,500 individuals.

This project expects to enhance students, local people and tourists about the bats. Also, the project contributes to the system of protecting the environment in the local community and the province of Soc Trang as well as in the nation of Vietnam. Moreover, this project may influence some scientists and young researchers in order that they can do research on bats more and more. Furthermore, the project improves value of local livelihood by conserving local culture. If bats are increasing, many tourists and visitors will go to this pagoda to visit, and local people may get benefit from that. Last but not least, the project will contribute one book/publication about bats at the Bat Pagoda which will be used as a reference for many people who are interested in bats.

This project will start in March of 2013 and hopes to finish before Oct 2014 (ten months). The project use method of PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal) to interview groups who live in the community around Bat Pagoda; stakeholders including monks; local government and school board nearby Pagoda and DARD (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Soc Trang Province). In addition, the project will try to use qualitative method to interview local people on dept interview and stakeholders above.

Furthermore, some activities will include training local people; tourist enhancement and games with students as well as doing postcard about the Bats and Pagoda.