Why bats? That is the question I always got when I told people I really wanted this internship to work on bat conservation, along with some faces of disgust at the thought of bats. Honestly, that face is one of the major reasons I want to be involved in bat conservation. This mammal is largely misrepresented in the media and has many stigmas working against it, especially since they have taken a lot of the blame for the pandemic that we have all been living. I want to help people see bats as the incredibly cool and adorable creatures I see them as, so that they too will take part in the mission to protect them.Evening emergence of Mexican free-tailed bats at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area.

Bats take part in ecosystem services that benefit humans a lot. We all hate dealing with insects and particularly mosquitoes, right? Well bats love to eat them! They are great at pest consumption and not only are they decreasing the amount of bug bites that we get, but according to Bat Conservation International they are also saving U.S. farmers about $23 billion every year by reducing crop damage and pesticide expenses. There are also bats that take part in pollination of some plants. Some of these plants would not thrive without the bat’s critical role as a pollinator. One of the plants that they pollinate is the agave plant that is used to make tequila. They are also seed dispersers. Fruit eating bats are important for restoring forests that have been lost to industries such as logging or agriculture. Fruit bats that forage in the nighttime can travel very long distances and therefore disperse seeds through their droppings across a large area that can contribute to up to 95% of new growth in forests that had been clear-cut.

Acoustic monitor deployment at Hidden Falls Regional Park.In California, the place of my internship, there are 25 species of bats These species include insectivorous bats and nectar/pollen feeding bats. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, California was the number one agriculture producing state in the United States in 2019. This means that bat presence in California has the potential to save the agricultural industry a lot of money. For my internship, I am working on the North American Bat Monitoring Project (NABat) to track species presence at different counties in California. We do this by using acoustic monitors that records the bats ultrasonic calls. Their foraging calls differ by species allowing for identification, but it is not as easy as it may sound. There are a lot of factors that can affect recordings and make the calls more difficult to identify. This project is long term and aims to keep track of trends in bat populations across the country. The data can be used for a variety of purposes including determining home ranges, effects of human disturbances, or effects of diseases such as White Nose Syndrome. Now that you know some of the many reasons, we should care about bats I will be going into more depth about my work with NABat in my next blog, so keep posted for more!

Agency: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Program: US Fish & Wildlife Service - DFP

Location: Sacramento Regional Office