Merlin Tuttle's Bat Conservation

Dr. MERLIN TUTTLE is an ecologist, wildlife photographer, and conservationist who has studied bats worldwide for more than fifty years. He founded Bat Conservation International in 1982. His work has been featured in Science, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and National Geographic.

Tuttle now leads another non-profit group, Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation (MTBC), founded in 2014, which uses science, field knowledge and photography to help save millions of bats each year. He has also published a book of his own personal, sometimes hair-raising bat adventures around the world, illustrated with his own gorgeously shot bat photos—The Secret Lives of Bats: My Adventures with the World’s Most Misunderstood Mammals (2015, available on Amazon).

Inspiring bat conservation worldwide.

Merlin Tuttle founded MTBC in 2014, in order to most effectively share his 60-plus-year legacy of experience, diplomacy, and photographic documentation of bats. Our goal is to empower other organizations and individuals for greater progress.

After retiring from more than 30 years of leadership at BCI in 2009, it had become apparent that existing organizations for bats were inadequately prepared to address the most serious new challenges. Furthermore, his collection of over 100,000 Kodachrome slides, which had served as the foundation of bat conservation for decades, was deteriorating and urgently needed to be protected and made digitally accessible. Through MTBC, approximately two-thirds of Merlin's collection, and more than 2,000 images of nearly 300 species are already available for self-serve, shopping-cart-type downloading from our photo gallery by conservationists, educators and publishers worldwide.

Additionally, we are providing ​key resources addressing the most important issues facing bats. We're countering irresponsible disease speculation with sound science. We're documenting much needed rabies policy changes in America, addressing the need for new directions in WNS policy, and recommending positive approaches to deal with the wind energy crisis, climate change and to overcome pesticide addiction.

MTBC is the only organization licensing Merlin's photos and supporting his ongoing conservation initiatives.

Thank you for your interest in bats. Any and all donations are greatly needed and appreciated!