Join the Nightlife: 2024 Recap
October 31, 2024
Thanks to all the Join the Nightlife: Bats and Agriculture attendees who joined us out in the field this year! Guests got hands-on experience with
Following our field trip to the bat farms along the Mekong River south of Phnom Penh in Kandal Province, Merlin and Neil Furey of Cambodia put on a two-day cave workshop for about 10 participants. They lectured with slide presentations to students who already had more than basic knowledge and experience with bats. After lunch, we drove to several caves. At the Phnom Chhngauk limestone mountain the students trapped bats at one of the cave entrances, and Merlin demonstrated bat portrait photography onsite.
Merlin, Neil and Ith Saveng, one of Neil’s former students and Cambodia’s first bat PhD, and I traveled on to the Tuk Meas district to visit the Vihear Luong Cave where an enormous colony of the Wrinkle-lipped bat (Chaerephon plicatus) lives. There Merlin and I got photographs of the spectacular emergence from inside and outside the cave while Jeff Acopian, one of our founding partners, got video.
Can you just imagine what it’s like inside that cave, when more than a million bats fly out for their evening meal of rice crop pests? You can see Merlin in the video constantly cleaning his lens.
Lucky me, I got to sit high on a ridge perpendicular to the entrance and shoot the columns of bats as they pour into the sky. Tons of bats exited a smaller entrance above the main one and merged with that column to create a Y formation. We did this two nights in a row, and both nights the emergences were spectacular!
About a million Wrinkle-lipped bats (Chaerephon plicatus) emerge from the Vihear Luong Cave in Cambodia at sunset.
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Thanks to all the Join the Nightlife: Bats and Agriculture attendees who joined us out in the field this year! Guests got hands-on experience with
Supporter and friend of MTBC, Australian conservation and animal welfare photojournalist Doug Gimesy, had his images recognized in two categories at the recent Siena International
Fieldwork requires a lot of equipment, but photography requires even more! During our June 2024 photography workshop, we transported over 100 lbs. of equipment —
Within the dim limestone passageways of Caverna Santa Catalina, the air came alive with bats. I stood in awed silence, taking in the rush of
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Michael Lazari Karapetian has over twenty years of investment management experience. He has a degree in business management, is a certified NBA agent, and gained early experience as a money manager for the Bank of America where he established model portfolios for high-net-worth clients. In 2003 he founded Lazari Capital Management, Inc. and Lazari Asset Management, Inc. He is President and CIO of both and manages over a half a billion in assets. In his personal time he champions philanthropic causes. He serves on the board of Moravian College and has a strong affinity for wildlife, both funding and volunteering on behalf of endangered species.