The Funchal City Council, through the Funchal Ecological Park, together with the Basic School of the 2nd and 3rd Cycles Dr. Horácio Bento de Gouveia, won the Biodiversity: Preserve and Regenerate contest of the ECO-Escolas program.
As a note sent to the newsroom informs, this nationwide competition had the participation of 72 schools, being the “Project for Monitoring Bat Shelters in the Ecological Park of Funchal” the chosen one, thus rewarding the institutions, the group of students, teachers and employees of the Funchal Ecological Park.
One of the main objectives of this project is to make the school community aware of the importance of biodiversity conservation, by carrying out works focused on this theme, which in this particular case used bats as a model, the only native mammals of the Madeira archipelago.
The work was carried out by class 8º10, selected by the interest and curiosity that the students showed, in the classroom, regarding bats.
The fieldwork of these students consisted essentially of placing boxes/shelters in different areas of the Park, characterizing the habitat and monitoring the shelters in order to detect the presence/absence of the three species of bats, namely the gray-eared bat ( Plecotus austriacus ), the Madeira bat ( Pipistrellus maderensis ) and the small tree bat ( Nyctalus leisleri verruncosus ).
At the same time, several activities were carried out at the school to demystify and sensitize the school community to the importance of conserving wildlife, which is essential for maintaining the health of ecosystems and the services they provide us that are essential for our survival.