Buffalo Bat Habitat

Bats are extraordinary creatures and pivotal players in a healthy and balanced environment.

 

Because they do their work at night, many people overlook them.  Because they are demonized in popular culture, they are feared or misunderstood by many more.  The fact is, few other wild animals provide such direct benefits to us humans as bats do. Bats control insects, pollinate and fertilize plants, and save farmers billions of dollars each year in pesticide application (and help us avoid the attendant side effects of such pesticide use).

 

My bat habit started in the mid-1990s.  On many summer and fall evenings, my kids and I sat out in the backyard around a fire pit, waiting for our view of the night sky. Reliably, bats joined us by the dozens.  They entertained us with their displays of aerobatic prowess as they chased bugs and rode up the thermal plume of the fire, like kids on an amusement park ride.  This summer, my grandkids came to visit and I tried to recreate that experience for them.  While they enjoyed the smores and pop and poking the fire with sticks, I was very saddened and disappointed. There were no bats.

 

What happened to all the bats?  The short answer is, they died. Up to 99% of our local bat species — the little brown, the tricolored, the northern long-eared and more — gone. What’s even more shocking is that this massive die-off didn’t happen over thirty years, or even twenty.  It took less than a decade.  Biologists first found evidence of the disease, called White Nose Syndrome (WNS), in a cave near Albany in 2006.  WNS is caused by a fungus that grows on hibernating bats. It infects their skin, causing them to awaken from hibernation in winter conditions they cannot survive.

 

There is no happy turn in this story, but there might be reason for hope. The fungus that causes WNS also exists in Europe and Asia, and bats there are not as affected by it. It’s possible that those bats are benefiting from some sort of genetic resistance that is now common across bat populations there.  While the science is still speculative, it may be that some of the surviving bats here possess similar immunity. In time, this possible genetic advantage could propagate and our bat populations would recover with resilience in the presence of the fungus.

 

"In time." If only we had it. Some people mistakenly think bats are close relatives of mice and rats. They are not. And unlike mice and rats, which multiply very quickly, a mother bat typically gives birth to only one pup every year.  Therefore, recovering from the loss of many millions of bats will take many decades.  That is, if it is allowed to happen at all.  While WNS is a malady of near extinction-level magnitude, there are other agents taking a serious toll on bats. Wind turbines kill close to a million bats each year in North America.  Climate change is causing unstable weather patterns that bats are not adapted to and could disrupt the lifecycles of the insects bats prey upon.  Loss of suitable habitat for bats due to human activity and natural events poses another huge threat.

 

Although bats face considerable challenges, people can do much to help:

 

• Learn more about bats. They really are fascinating!  And if you have kids, encourage them to learn about them and not to fear them.

 

• Respect bats as wild animals.  In the best situation, we would just leave bats alone to do their thing and we would just reap the benefits.

 

• Provide a safe space for bats by putting up a bat house. You can also take steps to make your yard more suitable and attractive to bats, such as growing native plants and eliminating unnecessary outdoor lighting.

 

• Don’t kill bats. Bats are naturally docile and if they enter our domain, either by accident or because they needed a place to roost, they are very vulnerable. Your decision to spare a single bat can have a big impact on their recovery and will ultimately benefit you.

 

If you wish to donate to Buffalo Bat Habitat to benefit bats here in Western New York you may do so here:

 

Many thanks to Larry Master for allowing us to use his photography throughout the site. Check out more of his outstanding wildlife photography here.

All photos by Larry Master, https://www.masterimages.org