Scientists discover new bat species in guinea’s nimba mountains just as mining project threatens unesco world heritage site

A remarkable scientific discovery has created a conservation dilemma in Guinea’s Nimba Mountains, where researchers have identified a new bat species in the same location where a major iron ore mining project is planned to begin operations.

In 2018, an international team of scientists from Bat Conservation International, Cameroon’s University of Maroua, and the American Museum of Natural History made an unexpected discovery while conducting environmental assessments in abandoned mining tunnels. Originally searching for the critically endangered Lamotte’s roundleaf bat, the researchers instead encountered an entirely new species—a distinctive bat with bright orange fur that local villagers had reported seeing at elevations around 4,600 feet above sea level.

The scientists were able to capture, examine, and safely release only two individuals of what they’ve now formally named Myotis nimbaensis, publishing their findings in 2021. They also recorded the species’ unique echolocation calls at five different tunnel entrances from mines abandoned in the 1970s and 1980s. This discovery represents both a scientific triumph and a potential conservation crisis, as the bats’ habitat sits directly in the path of U.S. mining company Ivanhoe Atlantic’s proposed open-pit iron ore operation.

The timing couldn’t be more critical. The Nimba Mountains are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for extraordinary biodiversity, and the newly discovered bat species appears to depend on the very mining tunnels and surrounding habitat that would be destroyed by the proposed extraction project. This case highlights the ongoing tension between economic development and biodiversity conservation in some of the world’s most ecologically valuable regions.