
Ranchers, Cattle, Tequila, and Bats
October 14, 2024 | Source: NAUTILUS | by Hillary Rosner
In a Mexican scrubland desert, a small bat flies by night, journeying hundreds of miles, pausing briefly to feast on the pollen of a singular flower: the wild agave plant. Agave plants bloom only once in their lifetime—taking 10 or even 20 years to do so. And the Mexican long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris nivalis) depends on these rare blooms exclusively for food as it travels from breeding grounds to birthing grounds and back again. In return, the bat pollinates the plants, laying a pathway forward for the next generation of this nectar highway.
The bat and its increasingly scarce agave flowers have danced in a delicate and intimate partnership for millennia. But they have been falling out of step as populations of both have taken a nosedive over recent decades. The partnership, however, is vital not just to their own survival, but also to the larger ecology of the region and to the people who make their lives on this land.
Small ranching communities, known as ejidos, dot the remote, dusty landscape. Years of drought and desertification have made an often tough existence there even tougher; some of the ejidos have been abandoned in recent years. But the bats and agave might bring salvation. With help from big-thinking bat conservationists, the solution could also benefit the soil, local ranchers and farmers, and the ecosystem as a whole.