WLC Member Profiles: Emily Stanford

I’m Emily Stanford, a wildlife filmmaker, passionate conservationist, and a bat researcher.

I quite literally stumbled into my passion for bats when I tripped over a bat hole in the forest floor in Peru. After I got over my initial fear of the bats that lived there, I became curious and began looking up facts about them. I was blown away by what I learned- who knew that bats pollinate bananas? Or that some species can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in a night! In fact, we wouldn’t have tequila, mangoes, guavas, macadamia nuts, durian, or many other food crops without bats, and they save the U.S. Agriculture economy roughly $23 billion/year by consuming pest insects. Not only are bats incredibly helpful, but they are also surprisingly very cute. (If you have never googled “Baby Bat Burrito” you definitely should!). Learning these facts made me realize how wrong my initial perception of bats as evil vampires had been; and it made me realize that bats are in trouble. Bat populations are in serious decline in almost every place where they have been investigated. I wanted to learn what was threatening them and how much our perceptions play into those threats.

This led me to design a proposal for the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship which funded my global project to study how different cultures view bats. I traveled solo to Fiji, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Malawi, and Madagascar, to meet and live with both bat lovers and bat haters, in order to learn about their beliefs about bats. During the year, I volunteered with bat rehabilitators and conservation groups, conversed with politicians and farmers, lived among bat hunting tribes, collected guano, and listened to folktales. As I listened to people’s stories, I realized that I wanted to share what I was learning with a wider audience. (It wasn’t me who needed convincing that bats are important after all!) So I began filming my interviews. 

I returned from the year with nearly 100 recorded interviews, and began teaching myself how to video edit. I eventually stitched together the film “The Truth About Bats” with the hope of bringing awareness and shedding light on these misunderstood mammals. 

“The Truth About Bats” was the first film I ever made, and now I am set on continuing to pursue filmmaking as part of my professional career. My partner, Hal Miller, and I have co-founded a video production company called “Wandering Path Productions” (named as such because our journey into filmmaking truly has been a wandering path). We hope to continue raising awareness of important environmental issues and giving people a chance to have their voices heard. 

I joined the WildLens Collective to learn from and connect with other passionate science communicators, and I am very honored and happy to be among such a supporting and amazing group.

Please follow our Instagram & Facebook page, and subscribe to our Youtube channel to follow our progress! I can’t wait to see where this path leads. 

If you would like to find out how to join the Wild Lens Collective, please click here.