The Invisible Mammal: Bats, Conservation, and Human Health with Kristin Tièche

Welcome to another episode of "Art Heals All Wounds," where we explore the powerful impact of art on the world and highlight artists creating positive change. In today's episode, I’m joined by filmmaker Kristin Tièche to delve into the fascinating world of bats and their ecological significance.

**Key Episode Highlights:**

- **Bats: Unsung Heroes of the Ecosystem:**

  Discover how bats provide vital ecosystem services such as pest control, pollination, and seed dispersal. Learn about their significant economic impact on agriculture, helping farmers like Mike DeWitt reduce pesticide use and save money.

- **Threats to Bats and Conservation Efforts:**

  Understand the threats bats face from habitat loss and white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease affecting North American bat populations. Explore how organizations like the Yolo Basin Foundation are working to raise awareness and protect bat habitats.

- **Human Interaction and Misconceptions:**

  Bats may be closer than you think! Discover the importance of bat houses for providing safe habitats and why wildlife rescue should be contacted if you encounter a bat in need.

- **Insights Into Bat Filmmaking:**

  Join guest Kristin Tièche as she shares her journey into creating the documentary "The Invisible Mammal," which focuses on bat conservation and the role of women in science. Learn how her storytelling aims to change perceptions and inspire action for bat conservation.

- **One Health and Human Responsibility:**

  Delve into the concept of "One Health," which emphasizes the interconnectedness of human, wildlife, and environmental health. Hear why protecting wildlife habitats is crucial for preventing pandemics and learn about the human accountability in events like COVID-19.

- **Engagement and Support:**

  Stay updated on "The Invisible Mammal" documentary by following on Instagram and Facebook (@theinvisiblemammal) or visiting the website theinvisiblemammal.com. Support the film's completion through donations to the Wildlands Collective.

Join us in this episode to learn more about the incredible impact bats have on our world and how we can contribute to their conservation. Be inspired by the art of film and storytelling as a force for change and awareness.

**Contributions and Support:**

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 Don't forget to go to my website and leave me YOUR story of belonging to feature on a future episode!

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Transcript

Pam Uzzell [00:00:12]:
Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell. I have a question. When did you realize that you loved bats? For me, it was when my parents took me when I was in early elementary school to Carlsbad Caverns to watch the bats fly out at dusk. I'm hoping that everyone, at least once in their lives, has the chance to see a large colony of bats flying out to begin their nightly bug hunt. It's one of the most awe inspiring things I've ever seen.

Pam Uzzell [00:01:12]:
Today, documentary filmmaker, Kristin Tièche talks about her upcoming film, The Invisible Mammal. If you, like me, are fascinated by bats, this is a film you'll want to see. And if you think you don't like bats, this film will change your mind. Bats do so much that make the world livable for us. Whether it's pollinating our fruit bearing trees and shrubs, or eating crop destroying insects, a healthy and sizable bat population is definitely something that we need. Even if you don't think that they are the endlessly interesting and adorable animals that I do. Unfortunately, many bat colonies and even whole species are in trouble. Their biggest threat is habitat loss, but they've also been harmed by humans entering the caves where they roost and exposing them to germs. Kristin talks about the North American bat colonies that are currently under threat from white nose syndrome, a fungus found in Europe or Asia that was introduced into North American caves with bat colonies from, in all likelihood, the sole of someone's shoe.

Pam Uzzell [00:02:28]:
In Kristin's film, we also learn about the scientists who are working to find ways to help North American bats survive this new threat.You want to know how you can really help me keep this show going? Follow me on your favorite listening app. So easy, right? And if you really want to give the show a boost, leave me a 5 star rating or review. Hi, Kristin. Thank you so much for being on Art Heals All Wounds. Can you start by telling us who you are and what you do?

Kristin Tièche [00:03:05]:
Sure. Thanks for having me on the show, Pam. So my name is Kristin Tièche and I'm a filmmaker and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I live in San Francisco, actually, and I am currently making my first feature documentary and that is called The Invisible Mammal. There's a visual for those who get to see the visual And, it is a film about bat conservation in North America and women in science.

Pam Uzzell [00:03:38]:
Yes. And that's how I discovered your work is that I saw this notice about a documentary being made about bats, and I love bats. And I thought, oh, I have to go to this little Zoom thing because you're gonna show a clip that you had finished as part of the film. And I just thought it was wonderful. The stuff on your website too, it's not the exact same clip. It's like a little, you know, a trailer or a teaser on the website. Exactly. The clip you showed went into a little more depth about one particular issue in the documentary.

Pam Uzzell [00:04:22]:
But before we talk about that film at all, I wanna hear how you decided to make a film about bats. I it's not the first time you filmed bats. Is it?

Kristin Tièche [00:04:34]:
Correct. So my bat story I like to tell my bat story, my bat origin story. It all started when I was a film student. So my bat story and my filmmaking journeys are kind of one and the same. And when I was a film student film student in upstate New York at Syracuse University, there was a pub that was on campus and in the summer months, we would go out and sit on the patio and have a beer. And and one night, I thought I saw something fly by my head and I looked up and the sky was just filled with bats. And being from the Bay Area, you know, our summers are always foggy and we just don't really think about bats here. But they are here, but we just don't see them.

Kristin Tièche [00:05:24]:
And so that was I was in my 20 my late twenties and that was like the first time in my whole life that I had ever seen a bat or encountered 1. And so I was just amazed and I thought it was just so cool that we could sit outside in the summer and watch bats, you know, this incredible wildlife phenomenon. And so flash forward 10 years later I was back here in San Francisco and I was reading an article in the New Yorker by environmental journalist Elizabeth Colbert and it was about how bats in North America were in trouble and they were dying by the millions from this disease called white nose syndrome. And it was wiping out hibernating bats, you know, across the northeast and this disease was spreading. The or the epicenter of the disease was in Albany, New York, a cave right outside of Albany. So when I read that, I immediately thought about these bats that I had seen when I was at Syracuse and wondering, you know, if these bats were still alive and if students, you know, just like me could still go out to that pub and sit out at night in the summer and and witness this incredible natural phenomenon. So I mean, when we're talking about white nose syndrome, we're talking about about a disease that is wiping out entire colonies. So it's very possible and there are accounts of bats being there 1 year and the next year they're they're no longer there.

Kristin Tièche [00:06:58]:
There aren't any at all. So when I read that article, I instantly my heart just broke and but then I also thought, you know, this is a really interesting story and I'm gonna follow it. And so that was back in 2009. And so I started following the story of white nose syndrome and its its creep across the country, north to south, east to west, and I and I was thinking that I should make a documentary about this. So yes, there are other bat films that I made. I started filming locally because making a feature documentary is just a huge challenge. It's very expensive and very taxing and especially if it requires travel. And being from the Bay Area, you know, the bats here are not hibernating bats and white nose syndrome is a disease that kills hibernating bats.

Kristin Tièche [00:07:54]:
So I had to find a local story about bats, you know, that that was interesting. And lo and behold, there's a colony of 250,000 Mexican free tailed bats who are non hibernating bats, migrating bats, that live under the I-80, right outside of Sacramento, California.

Pam Uzzell [00:08:15]:
I've seen those bats.

Kristin Tièche [00:08:16]:
Yeah. It's such a it's a beautiful sight to be seen and a lot of people grow up in Sacramento and they don't even know that they're there, you know. And so it just takes this awareness and then once you're aware that they're there, you wanna go out and see them. So I made a short film about those bats and that short film toured around festivals and did pretty well at festivals. And when I attended in person the screenings, people would come up to me after the film screen and say, you know, when I first sat down to see your film, I was really afraid of bats or I hated bats. But now that I've seen your film, I wanna go see a bat flight or I wanna volunteer or I wanna become a bat advocate. And I was like, well, that's exactly what I'm trying to do with this with this film and this type of storytelling. So it was through the process of showing that short that I embarked on the journey to create the feature length documentary.

Pam Uzzell [00:09:20]:
I wanna go back and have you explain white nose syndrome a little bit more. What is it? What causes it and what is that?

Kristin Tièche [00:09:31]:
White nose is caused by a fungus and the Latin term is Pseudogymnoascus destructans. And your listeners are like, what? So they also call it PD for short, and it took me about 5 years to learn how to pronounce that. So anyway, so it's a fungus, and the fungus was tracked in to that first cave in upstate New York, most likely on, like, the shoes or clothing of somebody who and so the cave in upstate New York is, it was a popular, like, tourist cave and so it could have been tracked in by any tourist that had maybe visited a cave in Europe or Asia where the fungus was present. Because the bats in Europe and Asia have evolved over centuries to be able to withstand the effects of this fungus and not succumb. But the bats here in North America, since it's a new fungus, it was a new disease, they're not ready. They have not evolved, and it's it's gonna take a while for that to happen. So when the fungus was introduced to this cave, it immediately wiped out the bats. And the way that that happens is that the fungus is, like, irritating just like any fungus.

Kristin Tièche [00:10:57]:
Like, we get athlete's foot and it itches and, you know, any kind of fungus like that wakes us up in the middle of the night and we can't sleep. You know, so the same thing is happening to the bats because they're mammals just like us, and they wake up in the middle of their hibernation. And every time they wake up from hibernation, that is a huge energy toll and they burn off a lot of their fat reserves. So each time they burn off their fat reserves, you know, they have less fat, you know, and they have less to last through the end of hibernation. So they wake up and then they they're like, well, I'm awake and I'm hungry because I've just burnt off all of my fat. And they look outside and there's no bugs to eat. Right? And so they end up starving to death because there's no food. So the white nose syndrome is is the disease caused by the fungus and the fungus is PD and sometimes PD can be present, but the bats have not started dying from white nose syndrome, which is the case in here in California.

Kristin Tièche [00:12:10]:
I think that now white nose syndrome or the fungus that causes white nose syndrome is present in 40 states and 8 provinces. And so it's north to south, east to west.

Pam Uzzell [00:12:24]:
Wow. That makes me super sad. I'm sure someone who tracked that fungus into that cave was someone who really loved bats.

Kristin Tièche [00:12:31]:
Probably. Yeah. So here's what people can do. 1, if you're somebody who loves bats and you're somebody who loves caves, make sure that you disinfect your shoes and clothing before you visit another cave that has bats. So for example, I think there was a jump from Minnesota to Washington State, and the scientists looked at that and they said, well, bats don't migrate that far. So it's probably a human that was in a cave that had PD, at least PD present, and then they went into a cave in Washington state. And then all of a sudden the bats start dying in Washington State. So Washington is a state where white nose is present, you know, as opposed to just the fungus.

Kristin Tièche [00:13:23]:
Wash your clothes, change your clothes, and and disinfect your boots with, like, alcohol. So every time we went into a bat habitat after filming, we would rub our shoes down with alcohol and change our clothes and wash them. I would rub the cameras down and the tripods off, you know, just so that way we wouldn't be tracking the fungus into any other environment.

Pam Uzzell [00:13:49]:
But I did see on your website that there are certain bats who are surviving this winter with white nose.

Kristin Tièche [00:13:59]:
Yes.

Pam Uzzell [00:14:00]:
Can you talk about that?

Kristin Tièche [00:14:02]:
Yeah. So in a lot of these places where white nose has has taken a heavy toll on the bat populations, sometimes there are these remnant populations. So for example, where we're where we filmed mostly in the Michigan Upper Peninsula, there are populations of the little brown bat that that have survived the effects of white nose syndrome. So, this is where doctor Winifred Frick and her team from Bat Conservation International decided to launch a pilot program, to help the remnant populations of these little brown bats survive the effects of white nose syndrome. So what they discovered is that if bats are fat enough, if they have enough fat reserves to wake up during the middle of hibernation several times because they're irritated by this fungus, then they'll make it to spring when they can naturally go out and start feeding again on moths and and all of the insects that they love to eat. So what they found was that if a bat is fat enough, then they'll survive. And so these remnant populations are is what doctor Winifred Frick and her team of bat biologists, they're trying to help them by creating a bug buffet, and the way they do that is they hang these UV lights up in the trees or, you know, on a post outside the entrance to the hibernacula, the caves and the mines where the bats, you know, spend the winter. And then before they go into hibernation, they they don't have to fly so far to find their food.

Kristin Tièche [00:15:52]:
The moths and the insects that they love to eat are all just swarming around this light and so they can just keep going back to the bug buffet and have another slice of pizza, you know, have another, like, chicken wing or whatever, you know, and then they get end up getting fat, and they then go into hibernation. And then in the spring, the lights are right there as well, And if they wake up, you know, maybe a little early, there's a light out there that will attract, you know, the few bugs and so then they can have a snack and they can kind of replenish their fat reserves upon leaving hibernation.

Pam Uzzell [00:16:36]:
Yeah. You have some images of those lights being put up and then the bugs swarming around them, and it's such a kind of brilliant, simple idea. Yeah. This must be a ridiculous question, but I'll ask it anyway. Is there no way to somehow eradicate the fungus from the caves?

Kristin Tièche [00:17:01]:
Well, it's not a ridiculous questions because the scientists have asked that question as well. So when you think about these cave environments, there's bacteria. I mean, it's just like our stomachs, like there's good bacteria and bad bacteria. And so we want the good bacteria, you know, because that helps us. And if they try to go in and and clean the caves in the hibernacula from p d, they may also be wiping out the good bacteria. So that's not really an approach that they wanna take, you know, because it's it's a whole habitat, you know, and it and it and it helps many species grow and survive in these conditions. So the other thing that is not possible is a vaccine. I mean, at least at this point, I know that there are people working on a a vaccine for white nose syndrome.

Kristin Tièche [00:17:58]:
However, at this point, when there's so much that's unknown about bats and where they are and where they're hibernating and how deep the cave or the hibernacula are, and sometimes we're talking about caves that have, like, tens of 1,000 or 100,000 bats or something in there. The scientists may not be able to reach all of those places, and they may not know. And and then it's spreading so fast because, you know, the bats share the caves with other species, and then other species that don't hibernate will go to you know, migrate to another cave, and they'll carry the fungus, but then they don't succumb because they don't hibernate. So it's it just is it's kind of like a little preschool, you know, with millions of millions of children running around. Right. It's really difficult to track where the bats go that have the fungus and then where they are in the hibernacula.

Pam Uzzell [00:19:01]:
Well, you said one word that I think it was doctor Frick saying talking about the threat to bats. I mean, you've already mentioned that in all likelihood, the fungus was introduced by a human entering a cave where bats were. But the biggest threat is habitat loss. And I find it interesting. There's another person in one of your little clips that says, it's natural that we would want to help other species. But, you know, I'm curious to hear from you. And in fact, bats actually help us. You know, so without bats, it would be a very, very different ecosystem and probably not one that's very livable for humans.

Pam Uzzell [00:19:49]:
And I would love to hear, and you may not know, but like, what are bats out there doing in terms of eating insects, pollinating? Like, what what are bats doing for us?

Kristin Tièche [00:20:02]:
Yeah. They do so many things for us, and it's true. Without bats, we'd be living in a very different world. I wanna frame this question inside a story about about habitat loss, about potential habitat loss, and also, the YOLO Causeway, which is featured in both my short film and also the feature film. So the Yolo Causeway is the bat habitat that is right outside of Sacramento and home to 250,000 Mexican free tailed bats approximately. These bats have decided to live under freeway. I mean, they're these are very versatile bats. There's plenty of bats, like, there it's the same species of bat that lives under Congress Avenue Bridge, the Mexican free tailed bat.

Kristin Tièche [00:20:52]:
So there's 2,000,000 of them there. I think that there are freeways in Arizona and all over Texas, you know, that have bats, like, living under them. They they kinda cluster up into these crevices in the freeway and in the overpass, so or the underpass. And it just turns out that it's a great place for them to live. It's warm, you know, they can get cozy in there, They're protected from predators. And in the case of the Yolo Causeway, it's right next to a wetland, and so there's water there and there's insects there, and it's also right next to agricultural fields. So we interviewed the rice farmer, Mike DeWitt, whose rice fields are right next to the Yolo Causeway, and he says that he doesn't really have to use pesticides because he's got this free pesticide that comes out every single night at sunset, and they go to town and they eat all of the moths that would then eat his crops. So he knows farmers that have to spend tens of 1,000 of dollars on pesticides every year, but that's not that's not Mike DeWitt.

Kristin Tièche [00:22:09]:
He gets to benefit both financially and just from a sense of doing good for the world from this colony of bats that come in and help him out every single night. So bats provide ecosystem services and ecosystem services are are things that nature gives to us for free. So you mentioned pollination. So bats are bug eaters, pollinators, and seed dispersers. And their guano is also like a great fertilizer, so some people like to use their guano for fertilizer for their garden. So let's talk about the pest control part of this. So we're talking about, like, tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars a year in pest control costs. That's what bats provide farmers, I think, just in North America alone.

Kristin Tièche [00:23:05]:
And if we lose the bats, right, then the farming industry, the agriculture industry suffers. They're going to have to start using more pesticides in order to grow their crops, and pesticides are not good for us either. You know, that they cause cancer. They cause other kinds of respiratory and hormonal imbalances, and there's also a link to infant mortality as well, when the increase of pesticide use. So there's that. And then there's pollination. So if you like, you know, if you like chocolate, mangoes, tequila, you can say thank you bat because they're the ones that that pollinate those plants. And then when we talk about seed dispersal, so the fruit eating bats that live in the tropics will eat the fruit and then when they fly over deforested areas, then they poop out the seeds and they help to reforest deforested areas.

Kristin Tièche [00:24:04]:
So those are some of the ecosystem services that bats provide for us for free. And yeah, if we lose the bats then, you know, then we're losing out on the natural ecosystem. So back to the Yolo causeway, right now, Caltrans wants to expand the freeway. We all know that expanding a freeway only adds to more traffic and is not a solution to traffic jams and clogged roadways. And expanding the freeway would basically, like, disrupt the bat population that lives under the Yolo Causeway. So Corky Quirk and the Yolo Basin Foundation up there, they're definitely trying to raise awareness right now, and hopefully the film will also raise awareness about why we need to protect this bat habitat.

Pam Uzzell [00:24:57]:
Well, that's interesting. I did not know that that was a part of Caltrans even on their radar.

Kristin Tièche [00:25:04]:
I think there's been a few you know, people listening to, this podcast can probably Google it and there's there's plenty of, you know, local news reports that have been done about this project. If we speak up and we tell people that we, you know, we want to make sure that the bats underneath the causeway I mean, not only are they helping the farmers, but the bats are losing their habitat. Right? Every time that we expand and we create a new development, the bats are losing their habitat. So somehow they found out, like, hey. This highway, you know, interstate 80 is a great place to live. There's water here. There's bugs here. We can have our babies here.

Kristin Tièche [00:25:49]:
You know, right I think right now, like, the the babies that were born in July are now, like, teenagers and stuff, and they're learning to be adults themselves. But it's a maternal colony, and so it's a a very protected place for these bats that are very versatile to live. And people go out. That was the other point that I was gonna make is that people go out every night to watch the bats, and it's this beautiful natural phenomenon that happens every night. They they emerge from the Yolo causeway at sunset in a ribbon across the agricultural fields, and it's just a beautiful sight to see. And once you see it the first time, you're just gonna be like, wow. I never knew that it was so cool to go out and see a bat flight.

Pam Uzzell [00:26:35]:
Right. Right. That's how I saw it is that one of my daughter's elementary school teacher took the class and invited all the families, obviously, because it was after school hours there to watch the bats fly out. And it's amazing just to think that they're there, you know? And my parents bought a house once, and for many years, they could not open the umbrellas on their patio furniture because bats were there roosting. And they didn't wanna, like, create this scenario where the bats would leave. And, you know, I've been to barns in Oakland where you look up at the ceiling and bats are there. It's it's really incredible how closely we live with them without even realizing it so many times.

Kristin Tièche [00:27:27]:
Yeah. And I mean, a lot of people I mean, this whole this whole, like, bats and, you know, patio umbrellas and in the barn or other places in your house is is pretty common. And because of the fear that people have about, about bats in general, like, when people encounter a bat on their patio or in in their house, sometimes they're afraid. Right? And then they wanna get the bat out, and they try to do that themselves or something, and it's you should not do that. If you if you have a bat on your property and you're scared, then call your local wildlife rescue and tell them what's happening, and they will they will talk you through it. So if you also have bats on your property and you're not afraid of them and you wanna give them a safe place to live, you can get a bat house. I have a friend who did that and had the exact same thing happen in San Rafael, and she opened her umbrella one one morning, and there was a little bat that was in there. And she's, like, oh, I'm gonna close it.

Kristin Tièche [00:28:33]:
And so, you know, she's, like, I wanna disturb the bat. But they're just looking for, like, a safe place to sleep Yeah. During the day. And so what she ended up doing was getting a bat house through us. You can find that on on the invisiblemammal.com, and you can support our film while getting a bat house. And so she bought a bat house, and she put it up on a sunny spot, you know, and she followed the directions and you're supposed to put it up high and in a sunny spot where it's gonna be nice and warm for the bats. And now she's got, like, bats living in the bat house and she said, could they come out every night and, you know, she looks down on on the ground beneath the bat house and there's like all those bat guano and so she knows they're living in there. And and so she's giving them a safe place to live now.

Kristin Tièche [00:29:20]:
Now they don't have to go into the patio furniture.

Pam Uzzell [00:29:23]:
Right. Right. Right. So really quickly, there is more information on your website about bats and the coronavirus COVID nineteen, which I thought was very fascinating. It was just a great visual to see people who work with bats who were masked up because the bats were much more at risk of us giving them COVID 19 than anyone getting COVID 19 from them. And that ties into all kinds of issues around habitat loss. Like why, you know, viruses do jump from species to species. It happens all the time.

Pam Uzzell [00:30:04]:
But if we're talking about wild animals and also COVID 19 did not jump directly from a bat. There was an intermediary

Kristin Tièche [00:30:12]:
Yes.

Pam Uzzell [00:30:13]:
Animal in between. So just briefly talking about how habitat loss and certain types of pandemics like this are related or new viruses or things like that if you Mhmm. You know, if that's something you feel like you could talk about.

Kristin Tièche [00:30:30]:
Yeah. I can talk enough about it. I'm definitely not a scientist, but I have hung out with some bat scientists and so I I do know what they say. So first of all, we need to just clarify that the bats in North America do not have covid 19 or they do not carry SARS cov 2. Right? And so the bat scientists in North America want to keep it that way. And so they are currently going out and swabbing bats all across, you know, the continent and then testing those swabs to see if SARS CoV 2 is is present. And currently, there there is no SARS CoV 2 in any bat in North America from what they've found from the data that they've collected. So you cannot get COVID from a bat in North America.

Kristin Tièche [00:31:25]:
Okay. And yes, you're right. So let's go back to so I think it's the Rhinolophus bat in China that that scientists have detected as like the origin of COVID of, you know, the of SARS CoV 2. But yes, what they think happened was that that bat was in an illegal wildlife market and it was being kept very near another species and I think that they think that it was a a pangolin. You know, it could be I think with MERS, it was a civet a civet cat. So so it it's a spillover event and that's when when a coronavirus will, you know, or a virus will jump from one species to another and then to the human. And so that's still from what I know is still the opinion of, you know, or the position of most scientists and they think that that is how the COVID pandemic started. So it's important to say that, you know, upfront is that the scientific opinion is that that it was a spillover event.

Kristin Tièche [00:32:33]:
And so then when we're talking about preventing future pandemics, you know, we need to really think about, this concept of one health and this is a concept that's brought up in my feature film, The Invisible Mammal. So One Health is a concept that that human health, wildlife health, and the environmental health are all connected. And so if we preserve and protect wild spaces for wildlife, they'll have a safe and healthy place to live and we can coexist with them because if they're healthy, then we're healthy. But if we keep invading and encroaching upon wildlife habitat by making their habitat smaller and smaller or taking wildlife out of their natural habitat, then we increase the interactions that humans will have with species that carry coronaviruses and other other kinds of viruses. And so this is one of the reasons why it's so important to protect wild places for wildlife.

Pam Uzzell [00:33:43]:
And the other thing that I maybe this was also doctor Frick was saying that there are actually protocols in place for what should happen if there is some sort of mutated virus from another mammal that gets introduced to humans and none of them were followed. So

Kristin Tièche [00:34:07]:
Yeah.

Pam Uzzell [00:34:07]:
It's it's also I don't know. I just thought it was really good to kind of reiterate that the fact of a pandemic, of COVID, that is human. The responsibility of that lies on humans and the human behavior and not on any sort of wildlife or particularly bats, which we're talking about now.

Kristin Tièche [00:34:29]:
It's just like climate change. We can continue to put our head in the sand, you know, and we can continue to burn fossil fuels because that's kind of what we're doing. And climate change is still gonna happen, you know, because we did not follow the scientific the instructions, you know, that were given by scientists, you know, by the people who know how to predict what's gonna happen. And so the same thing goes for the pandemics. I mean, there's been there have been a lot of studies, you know, about there there's going to be another pandemic, you know, that's going to happen, and here's how to prevent it.

Pam Uzzell [00:35:11]:
Mhmm.

Kristin Tièche [00:35:11]:
And those protocols were not followed like you mentioned. So that's how we ended up, you know, in the situation that we were in. And luckily now, you know, we have we have more awareness, you know, obviously because now we've been through it and there's more awareness. So maybe I'm a filmmaker. I can't make those kind of predictions. But, you know, my hope is that maybe. I can say that. My hope is that maybe now that we've had this experience and we know what it's like to live through a pandemic, we have more awareness and more of an understanding of what needs to be done and and it's not like something that will happen in the future.

Kristin Tièche [00:35:54]:
You know? It's something that could very well happen to us again because what is predicted is that with climate change, more viruses are going to be, you know, released, you know, whether it's through permafrost melt or, you know, this encroachment upon, wildlife habitat. More viruses will be released, and there there is more potential for global pandemics to happen.

Pam Uzzell [00:36:23]:
Well, I love the film you're making. I'm really excited for it to be finished. Where can people find out more about you and about this film?

Kristin Tièche [00:36:34]:
So the first thing that they can do is they can follow @theinvisiblemammal on Instagram and Facebook. We post very regularly on both platforms, you know, about, progress on the film and events that people can attend. And all of our events that we're doing online or in person are on our website, the invisiblemammal.com/events. And one more thing, if people wanna help us finish the film because our film is currently in it's nearing the final stages of post production and we are still fundraising. So if people are interested in helping us out and they love bats and they wanna see a film about bats and women in science finished and in festivals and in theaters and streaming, then they can go to the invisiblemammal.com/donate and they can make a donation. A tax deductible donation because we are fiscally sponsored by the Wildlands Collective, which is a 501c3.

Pam Uzzell [00:37:45]:
That is wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Kristin. I'm looking forward to seeing this film. I'm excited about it, and I just appreciate. It is really hard to make a feature doc. So thank you. Thank you for all of that work.

Kristin Tièche [00:38:01]:
Yes. It's been like I said, it's been many many years in the making. And so we're to get to this point, it it just feels really good.

Pam Uzzell [00:38:08]:
Good. Well, congratulations to being this close.

Kristin Tièche [00:38:11]:
Thank you. Thanks for having me on the show.

Pam Uzzell [00:38:16]:
You're listening to Art Heals All Wounds. Thank you to Kristin Tièche for talking about her upcoming documentary, The Invisible Mammal. I'm going to put the info for this film in the show notes so that you can keep track of events around it, and if you want to donate to help Kristin make it these last few steps over the finish line. I hope that, like Kristin, you love bats, or at the very least, value all they contribute to maintaining a habitable ecosystem for the rest of us. And maybe you hate bats, but you love spiders. Or you hate spiders, but love snakes. Or you hate snakes, but love humans. It doesn't really matter.

Pam Uzzell [00:39:24]:
As Kristin explains, the idea of one health is that in order for any of us to be healthy, we all have to be healthy. So which ever animal is your familiar, know that in wishing it the best possible outcome, you're wishing for the best possible outcome for the entire planet.

Do you have a story to share about the role that art and creativity play in your life? I'd love to share it on the show. Just go to my website arthealsallwoundspodcast.com and leave me a voicemail. When you share your story, you help someone else. And if you want to help me keep this show going, and feel like you're able, leaving a small donation for the show is really helpful. You can do that on my website by clicking on the link that says, 'buy me a coffee'. 

Thanks for listening.

Pam Uzzell [00:40:20]:
The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco. This podcast was edited by Iva Hristova.