Bats: Conservation

Summary: Bat conservation is the subject of the final episode of the series on bats. Join Kiersten as she talks about what is going on to help bats. 

 

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

 

Show Notes:

Books: “Bats in Question: A Smithsonian Answer Book,” by Don E. Wilson

“America’s Neighborhood Bats,” by Merlin Tuttle

“The Bats of Europe and north America,” by Wilfried Schooner and Eckard Grimmberger

“Bats: A World of Science and Mystery,” by M. Brock Fenton and Nancy B. Simmons

“The Secret Lives of Bats,” by Merlin Tuttle

Websites: Merlin Tuttle Bat Conservation: https://merlintuttle.org

Bat Conservation International: https://www.batcon.org

EUROBATS: https://unric.org

BatLife Europe: https://www.batlife-europe.info

Podcasts:

BatChat from Bat Conservation Trust in the UK

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

 

Transcript

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Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

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Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

Sadly, this is the last episode of bats. I’ve had a ton of fun writing and recording these episodes. One of my favorite things to talk about is bats and I absolutely love educating people about bats. The tenth thing I like about bats is the conservation plans that we have developed to help them survive everything the world throws at them.

All bats around the world are under threat. Some are classified as endangered and most populations are in decline. But there are people out there, like myself and you, fabulous listeners, that are trying to make the future of bats bright.

Some of the things bats are fighting against include habitat destruction. Forested habitats across the globe are being cut down for human use. Building houses, strip malls, converting forest to grazing land, and mining caves for minerals are all devastating threats to bat populations. Shifting temperatures is also something impacting bats. The timing of the emergence of insects with the timing of the emergence of insectivorous bats from hibernation needs to be spot on, but with the altered temperatures around the world, that timing has shifted. Insects are emerging earlier because of warming winters and the bats are missing the window. This can negatively impact bats that migrate long distances to return to nursery sites where they raise their pups. Even nectar eating bats are impacted by the warmer temperatures because plants are blooming earlier and earlier. Those that follow the blooming flowers are getting caught in end of winter freezes that they are not physiologically equipped to deal sometimes resulting in death.

Disease is another threat to bats. Currently in the United States insectivorous cave dwelling bats are combating a disease called White-nose syndrome. This disease is caused by a fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans or Pd, that loves cool, damp places. Sound like a bat hibernaculum? Exactly. The spores of the fungus get on the face of hibernating bats and digs into the skin there. It blooms into a white fluffy structure, hence the name white-nose syndrome. The fungus itself does not kill the bats, but it irritates the bats rousing hem from sleep too often during their hibernation causing dehydration resulting in death. 

We now know that this fungus came from Europe on the shoes of some spelunkers. Equipment was not cleaned properly before entering a cave here in the United States, so the spores were spread. It first appeared in caves in New York State and has now spread across all of the Eastern US and is making its way across the Midwest. It can survive in any cave that stays cooler all year round. When this arrived in 2006 it hit three species the hardest, the Little Brown Bat, Northern Long-eared Bat, and Tri-colored Bat. Their populations declined 90%. This is one of the reasons I chose the topic of my Master’s thesis.

There is very little we can do to help bats combat this disease, but there is some hope that they can survive this on their own. Bat populations in Britain and surrounding countries have been in decline for much longer than those in the United States. When White-nose syndrome was traced back to the spelunkers that had just returned from a European caving trip, scientists on both