Bat City

Bat City - A new outdoor visitor experience that aims to reach Austin's estimated 140,00 annual bat watchers before, during, and after their visit.  It’s the perfect opportunity to educate and amaze them with the beauty and importance of bats.  With new QR code connected signage, a new online hub BatCity.info, and stunning short films we will transform the bat viewing experience and instill compassion and conservation values.  All while telling an important piece of Austin’s history when calm heads prevailed against misinformation. 

The Story Behind the Project

Emmy award winning wildlife filmmaker, Skip Hobbie, had been asked to film the bats in his hometown of Austin many times over the years.  In the summer of 2022, as he filmed our Congress Ave Bridge bat colony for the BBC David Attenborough series Mammals, Skip was bothered by how few people have the opportunity to learn anything about bats during the sometimes hours they wait to see our famous bats.  BBC Viewers would learn more about Austin’s bats than the vast majority of visitors out at the bridge each night in summer.  

We celebrate the bats as part of Austin’s weird identity, but we’re failing them by not making a greater effort to reach people and enhance their bat watching experience. 

Bats have had a PR problem for all of history. Humans naturally fear what we don’t understand, and what is more mysterious than flying mammals out of sight above our heads at night?  Add to that misinformation about diseases, and bats get a very bad rap, despite how incredibly important they are for our world.  

Bats are gentle, beautiful, and frankly really cool mammals that human beings depend on. They pollinate important crops, replant our tropical rain forests by dispersing seeds, and they control pests, a value of over a billion dollars a year to Texas farmers alone.   

When you’re a hammer, everything is a nail. Likewise, when you’re a wildlife filmmaker who has seen the power of film to change hearts and minds… you’re going to want to make a documentary.

The Idea: Films, Signage, and BatCity.info

Bat City will be a 15-minute educational documentary ‘visitor center film’ of the highest quality, about the natural history of Austin’s bats, the beauty and importance of bats around the world, and the history of how a conservation hero, Merlin Tuttle, stepped up to protect our bats here in Austin, Texas and pioneered bat conservation around the world by founding Bat Conservation International and later Merlin Tuttle Bat Conservation..  

For the mobile audience out at the bridge, we’ll also be breaking the story and bat facts down into :30 - :90 second videos, perfect for families to watch as they wait for the bats to emerge. 

For all these amazing films to reach their audience, we’ll build a new online hub, BatCity.info to serve as the city’s main point of information about the bats, and new QR code connected signage to reach people at the bridge and help them find the videos and other cool stuff about bats online, including how they can help with local and international bat conservation efforts.  

Funding:

The total budget for this project including planning, films, signage, and the new online hub will be around $750k, and to date we’ve raised $70k privately as start up funds.  Since this is such a community and tourism facing project with a big audience and longevity, we’re hopeful that corporate sponsors will step up for the majority of our funding, but every little bit helps as we begin production.  

Your donation via the DonorBox platform will go to our 501(c)3 non-profit partner The Wild Lens Collective, who help manage accounts for these kinds of conservation film project.  All donors will get mentioned in the film’s credits and on the website. Donors of $1000 or more, please see the info below and will receive additional credit and recognition.  

Thank you for donating and helping to celebrate Bat City!

Corporate Sponsors and Large Donors

If you are a potential corporate sponsor or a private donor looking to make your mark on this project with a donation of $1000 or more, please reach out to [email protected] for information on how to make your tax deductible donations free of administrative fees via our other non-profit fiscal sponsor, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation.