#21 Ben Paris - New Zealand's Very Own Batman

Ben Paris aka New Zealand Batman is a real life conservation superhero. By day he works at Auckland Zoo, but come night he is New Zealand's greatest champion for our only native land mammals.

Bats are one of New Zealand's most fascinating creatures and there's still so much we don't know about them. It doesn't help that they're tiny and only come out at night.

Unlike our native birds, bats have had a bit of a PR problem over the years thanks, in part, to their association with horror movies and vampires. For this reason, they've been a bit neglected in conservation funding and, today, they're at risk of disappearing forever.

The more we learn about them, the more we understand how crucial they are to the health and conservation of our native forests.

In this episode, Batman Ben talks about how important these creatures could be to the future of New Zealand's forests and the work that's being done to recover populations around the country.

If you want to learn more about the Less Short-Tail Bat in particular, you can check out the article that Jonny wrote for New Zealand Geographic here.

You can follow Ben on Twitter here and on Facebook here.