I'm Going to Hungary!

It’s official: I’ve finally bought my plane tickets to Hungary for the Speleobats Cave-roosting Bats International Conference! To bring everyone up-to-date, the conference is focused on the conservation and tourism issues related to cave-roosting bats. I received a grant from the Cybec Foundation, a charitable foundation dedicated to supporting the environment, education, and art, to attend and present my Fulbright research. The conference is in late September, which I know is REALLY close and a bit too close for buying plane tickets. The reason I waited so long to arrange flights was because I was waiting to hear back from the organizers of the conference to arrange a trip up to the Aggtelek National Park in northern Hungary before or after the conference. Steve Bourne told me that if I’m in Hungary I HAVE to go there because the caves are spectacular. However, when I looked the park up online, it appeared that it’s quite hard to get to via public transportation (even though it’s only about an hour from Miskolc, where the conference is being held) and that the locals don’t speak English much. If I went I wanted to get the most out of it, so I contacted the conference organizers to try to arrange a trip up there with someone they knew. I recently heard back from them that one of the park staff, who will be attending the conference, will drive me up there when the conference ends and we’ll spend two days looking at the best sites, including caves, buildings, and mines where bats roost. I think we’re also going to be doing some mist-netting. I will have to be extra-careful not to use any of the same gear/clothing I use in caves/with bats in Hungary when I get back to Australia (and the US) in order to prevent the spread of the fungus, Geomyces destructans, that causes White-nose Syndrome in US bats. It’s believed that cavers from Europe brought the fungus over to the US, and that US bat populations were not immune to it or had not evolved with it and thus were decimated. From what I’ve read, Geomyces destructans has been found in Hungary, so I’ll have to be careful. Despite that, I’m very excited that the trip is finally coming together. It should be a great opportunity for me to hear about some of the bat research going on in Europe and to network with even more bat people. It’ll also be the first conference (and international conference at that!) that I attend truly alone, which is a bit nerve-wracking but also exciting. More to come later!