LAUSR

Over the past 3 years, the Mauritian flying fox (Pteropus niger), a Mascarene endemic and threatened island fruit bat, has been culled to half its global population in attempts to increase fruit producers’ profits (1). As a result, its Red List status was recently reassessed from Vulnerable to Endangered (2). Culling of flying foxes has been shown to be ineffective in boosting profits of commercial fruit producers; lychee production dropped by some 70% (3) after the previous mass culling campaigns. Despite the risks, the lack of benefits, and the existence of effective alternatives (4), Mauritius is planning a new mass cull for 2018 (5). The fruit bat is the last survivor of three Pteropus species and of other large frugivores such as Dodos and giant tortoises that used to inhabit the island (6). By eating fruits and potentially disseminating seeds of about half of the native trees of the island’s forests (7), the species fulfills a keystone ecological role in Mauritius’s remnant native habitats. Only 5% of these habitats remain, and they harbor one of the most threatened biota worldwide (8). Mauritius’s biodiversity protection law was weakened in 2015 specifically to enable mass culls (9), which are supported by National Parks and Conservation Service resources that were originally intended to conserve the country’s threatened biodiversity (10). Events unfolding in Mauritius are exposing the limitations to the approach Edited by Jennifer Sills local and international conservationists and conservation organizations have used as they call for reasonable management. Evidence, appeals, petitions, articles (11), street protests, and the missions of international experts such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (10) have been largely ignored. Conservationists should diversify and intensify their approaches for tangible results by incorporating litigation that stalls unnecessary biodiversity destruction (12). For example, the 2015 mass cull breached the law in place at the time and therefore may have been prevented by an injunction (9). In the longer term, conservationists should apply marketing persuasion principles to conservation. They should focus on educating the public, fruit producers, and ministry advisers and technicians about the ineffectiveness of culling and the nonlethal alternative solutions. Conservationists should also identify and address barriers to the implementation of evidence-based policy, including the focus on short-term goals driven by election cycles at the expense of long-term environmental interests (12). F. B. Vincent Florens* and Christian E. Vincenot University of Mauritius, Réduit, Mauritius. Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]