Palamanga ‘Parfait’ Thiombiano is one of Conservation Nation’s 2024 conservationist grant recipients. He has a master’s in animal behavior and ecology from the University Joseph KI-ZERBO (UJKZ) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa. Parfait is pursuing a PhD through the UJKZ Department of Biological Sciences, with research focused on bat ecosystem services—particularly the role of insectivorous bats in controlling pest insect species.
Parfait’s passion for bat conservation led him to be selected as one of nine students to attend the 2024 West African Small Mammal Fellowship field course in Nigeria. While there, he gained skills in conducting bat surveys, including mist netting, harp trapping, and acoustic monitoring. He is one of only ten students in the Global Union of Bat Diversity Networks (GbatNet) program—a bat conservation organization with 18 networks worldwide. As a GbatNet student, he had the opportunity to network with other bat conservation professionals at the 2024 International Bat Research Conference in Houston, Texas. Parfait is a Bats Without Borders AfriPopo Student Indaba committee member and is organizing an upcoming online symposium for early-career bat conservation professionals. He also has experience with the One Health approach* through his work with the COHWA project.
* “…an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems.” (World Health Organization, 2024)
Conserving the Bats of Burkina Faso
Parfait’s project aims to protect bats and their roost habitats in the Nazinga Game Reserve (NGR) in Burkina Faso, West Africa. His project will be the country’s first-ever ecological study conducted with mist nets and acoustic bat detectors (to date, there is no documented research in the region based on bat echolocation data).
Parfait will use his funding to purchase field equipment and educational outreach materials. He plans to identify bat roosts and species in the NGR with the help of seven students and three park rangers. Parfait will train his assistants to set up mist nets, collect echolocation and environmental data, and handle the bats to take morphometric (size and shape) measurements. He will also conduct community awareness programs targeting three local groups: individuals with no formal education, secondary school students, and elementary pupils. These programs will include bat painting competitions, quizzes, and lessons about bat benefits and misconceptions. Parfait also hopes to organize a tree-planting campaign to restore degraded forests. He will submit his project outcomes at an international conference, on social media, and to NGR stakeholders.
