ISLAND GARDEN CITY OF SAMAL, Davao del Norte, Philippines (PNA) – This island’s world-famous bats are no longer content with just pollinating durian trees all over the Davao Region.

This time, probably so drunk with their popularity after gaining global recognition as the biggest known population (nearly two million) of fruit bats in the world, male bats here on Samal Island were found getting restive – and getting drunk.

Returning at early dawn to their huge underground caves in the sprawling Monfort hillside property, male bats had been found to be stone-drunk from drinking too much “tuba” or coconut wine from Davao’s coconut plantations.

“These drunk male bats walk around with wobbly feet, swaying and tumbling over as they try to hang on our mango trees,” said Norma Monfort, founder and president of the Monfort Bat Cave and Conservation Foundation, and owner of the Monfort property with the famous bat caves, home of the two million fruit bats.

The bats usually start flying out of the Monfort caves at dusk just after the sun sets behind the Mount Apo mountain ranges, according to Monfort, to pollinate fruit trees, especially durian, in Davao and surrounding provinces.

After a whole night of pollinating spree, both the male and female bats start making their way home to the Monfort caves on Samal Island (officially known as Island Garden City of Samal).

Monfort said hundreds of thousands of noisy bats can be seen swarming around the five large mango trees waiting for their turn to get inside the huge underground caverns.

“We can easily distinguish the male from the female bats because of their wild and rowdy behavior as they make their way into the caves,” Monfort said.

Sipping the sap from coconut trees had been a long practice of the male bats, according to Monfort, and their “drunken behavior” studied for sometime but this has not affected their global conservation efforts to preserve the natural sanctuary of the bats on Samal Island.

Fully supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and the Agreement on the Conservation of Population of European Bats (EUROBATS) have decided together to declare the years 2011 and 2012 as the “Year of the Bats” (YOTB).

The two-year bat campaign seeks to highlight the world’s only flying mammal, and provide funding and technical support for bat conservationists all over the world.

Here on Samal Island, the Monfort-run bat foundation has marked February 8 as a kick-off activity for the “Year of the Bats” by putting together a bat-watching event called “Full Moon Together with the Bats.”

The date coincides with the first full moon of the Chinese Lunar Calendar, according to Monfort, which makes it “a fitting climax” to the two-week long celebration of the Chinese New Year, which magnifies the bat as a symbol of long life, wealth, and health in the Chinese culture.

“We’re inviting people to watch the bats fly out of the caves during the full moon at early evening here on Samal. It’s a wonder to behold. You’ll never see anything like it,” said Monfort, who was recently awarded with a Gold Hero Medal by the United States-based Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund for her efforts to save the two million bats living inside huge caverns beneath her ten-hectare hillside property on Samal Island.