Aotearoa New Zealand’s only native land mammals are three bat species — one of which is likely extinct and the other two headed in the same direction due to habitat loss and other threats.A community-led bat research group, one of the first in the country, is working to help save the New Zealand long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) by conducting surveys for bats in and around Franklin county, near Auckland.Their research project, called Finding Franklin Bats (FFB), is also aiming to spread local awareness of New Zealand’s bats and their plight by working with landowners and community members.Over the past three years, volunteer numbers have swelled from 50 to more than 180, and in 2026 FFB received enough funding to employ seven people, six of them members of local Indigenous communities.
Billy Mclean knew nothing about bats. As a lifelong Kiwi, there was no reason for him to.
Unlike in neighboring Australia and other parts of Oceania whose renowned flying foxes grow meter-long wingspans, Aotearoa New Zealand is famous for its birds, not bats.
Mclean worked as an arborist in the Franklin area, an agricultural county south of Auckland on the North Island. He said he felt he knew everything about the local forest, until one night 23 years ago.
