Pennsylvania Game News - July 2019 - 14

best conditions.
State and citizen conservationists
have teamed to help monitor summer
colonies of female bats rearing young
in a project called the Appalachian Bat
Count.
"In analyzing the data for little
brown bats, it appears there are some
slight increases," Turner said. "What
we don't know is if this is immigration
or true recovery? Hopefully, it's a little
of both."
The Game Commission is tracking
known colonies of female little brown
bats and is seeing some increases, but it
isn't clear where they hibernate. Knowing where they winter would allow
greater protection.
"The truth is, we don't know where
the vast majority of bats are hibernating," Turner said. "It's a significant
piece of the puzzle. Knowing where
would be a step forward for bat conservation."
Fragments of good news is all cave
bats and research offer, which is unfortunate given the decade-plus all-out
blitz by an international cast of biologists, mycologists and epidemiologists
to right this improbable assault on

hibernating bats. Some of that stems
from how little wildlife managers knew
about bats and hibernacula when WNS
struck. Some of it is tied to funding and
manpower.
"The whole mess remains so inconceivable," noted Game Commission
Executive Director Bryan Burhans.
"Cave bats have been around for millions of years, eating insects and raising
their pups all summer, hibernating all
winter. Their existence seemed relatively secure.
"But their loss is a message to all
wildlife managers that the catastrophes
our smaller world has endured - chestnut blight, emerald ash borers, chytrid
fungus in amphibians - are going to
keep coming. More than ever, our vigilance in conservation matters."
Turner would consider Pennsylvania fortunate if it can stave off the
extirpation of the four hardest-hit cave
bats: little brown, northern long-eared,
Indiana and tri-colored bats.
His hope is for his kids and grandkids to see these flying mammals, even
though their abundance will never come
close to the numbers of bats he's seen.
Time will tell.

Cover Painting by Ken Hunter
The loss of America's little brown bats is hard to accept by anyone
who grew up watching them work for mosquitoes over irrigation ponds
in farm country or under streetlights in small towns. They were about
as perfectly suited to their environment as a wildlife species ever could
expect to be. Capable of eating in excess of 600 mosquito-sized insects per
hour, they were a ruffed grouse's best friend and a life-saver for backyard
picnickers. This handsome painting by Ken Hunter captures the delicate,
but highly durable little brown in hot pursuit of one bite of its nighttime
meal. Nowadays, the competition for night-flying insects isn't what it used
to be. It's fair to say the last 14 years have been a certifiable nightmare
for bats, a creature undeservedly associated with trouble. In most wildlife
communities, few wild animals measure up to the contributors bats are.

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Pennsylvania Game News - July 2019

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