Archive for July 27th, 2007

Outdoor Stories with Barbara French

Friday, July 27th, 2007

Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories from TPWD

Barbara French is a wildlife biologist and science officer at Bat Conservation International (BCI), in Austin.

Bat Conservation International works to protect bats and bat habitat. We do education, we do direct conservation action, and we do it world-wide.

And French is on the front line of bat conservation. In her Outdoor Story she shares with us how she became passionate about bats and BCI.

I lived in Wisconsin for many years and then I moved to Austin in 1981. And it was not long after that that a friend of mine came and said ‘Hey, there are fruit bats under the bridge! Under Congress Avenue Bridge.’

Well, of course, it turned out that they weren’t fruit bats… they were insect eating bats, but I said I was very interested because I really knew very little about bats. So I right away wanted to go down and look. And I remember standing under the bridge and looking around and saying ‘Well, I don’t see any bats.’

And right at that moment they dropped down to start flying out, and it was just the most awesome thing I had ever seen. I was really captivated from that moment on. I began learning more about bats and a couple years after that became involved with Bat Conservation International.

Visit passporttotexas.org and share your outdoor story with us, and we might just put you on the radio.

That’s our show…we had help today from Loren Seeger…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti