Babu Shurana reminded me of the character Getafix in Asterix books: a wise old man who could read the forest.
The elderly Anjouan islander had done so years before “green” became a trendy word.
“If the bats go, the rivers will dry up,” he had been known for telling people.
The bats he was referring to were one of the largest fruit bats in the world, with wingspans of 1.5m. They roosted up on the highest point of the island – one of the Comoros Archipelago – on the summit of an extinct volcano where those who practised slash-and-burn agriculture had not yet reached.
However, I was to discover that they had got pretty close.
Missionary-explorer David Livingstone, who made his mark on mainland Africa with places named after him that have survived post-independence name changes, introduced them to the scientific world when he called in at the island back in 1863 on a trip between Africa and Bombay, now Mumbai. He shot one of these bats and sent the specimen to the British Museum in London.
In doing so, he left his mark in the world of zoology: they are called Livingstone’s fruit bats. However, unlike the Zambian town called Livingstone, the Malawi mission station called Livingstonia, and the Livingstone Mountains of Tanzania, their future is less certain. The Livingstone fruit bats are highly endangered.
They’re fussy eaters that turn their noses up at food from vegetation that has been tampered with. Only primary vegetation for us, thank you very much.
Another species, the Seychelles fruit bats, is willing to forage on what has grown on disturbed ground. They’re not as big as their Livingstone cousins but are plentiful.
Habitat loss has threatened the Livingstone’s fruit bats. The climb to their roost got steeper and steeper. When I visited in 1992, we had to cling on to vegetation on a vertical slope before we finally reached a spot where we could see their roost at intervals through the passing mist.
They hung off the branches like huge balls. We waited patiently. In time, one got airborne and looked like a lammergeier, the bearded vulture, high up in the mountains of Lesotho.
At that moment, I slipped and went tumbling down the vertical slope until I managed to cling on to something. A banana tree among a grove of them, planted by humans.
That’s how cultivated the island of Anjouan was back then. And most of its rivers had indeed run dry as bananas, coconuts, cassava and grazing for goats had been introduced to feed the impoverished population. And as Babu Shurana had prophesied.
The Jersey Zoo has, meanwhile, come to the rescue of the Livingstone’s fruit bat, considered the world’s most endangered.
Its web site reads: “Sadly, our Livingstone’s fruit bats are vital to saving the species from extinction. In the wild, extensive deforestation is driving these bats to the edge of extinction. Our captive population, which makes up 90% of the global captive population, is ensuring we don’t lose this incredible bat forever.”
For further information, please visit: https://www.durrell.org/visit-jersey-zoo/meet-our-animals/mammals/livingstone-s-fruit-bat/ and https://daharicomores.org/en/home/
The Independent on Saturday