Once widespread and common in several countries of the Pacific, the small insect-eating Pacific Sheath-tailed Bat Emballonura semicaudata has experienced a dramatic decline throughout its range. It is currently listed by IUCN as Endangered with the Samoan population probably extinct. It is now very rare in Fiji having disappeared from dozens of caves from which it was known in the 1970-80s. So it is with some excitement that a NFMV survey of caves in Taveuni located the bekabeka Sheath-tailed Bat in two caves on the island. And in one of them, the Tavuyaga Cave near Nakorovou village, Vuna, the bat was breeding. NFMV’s Kelera Macedru undertook the field survey for a report she is compiling “Preliminary Inventory of Caves of Taveuni”. This research is part of– a larger project “Conservation of the Endangered Fiji Flying Fox Mirimiri acrodonta on Taveuni Island” which NFMV is undertaking on Taveuni and which is funded by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (www.cepf.org).

Fiji has only two small insect-eating bats, the other being the Fijian Mastiff Bat Chaerophon bregullae, a slightly larger cave-dwelling bat which is also a very uncommon species and only known from Taveuni and Vanua Levu.