Bat flat
Bats are, for the most part, friendly foragers, eating insects and fruit — even pollinating a few plants as they patrol the night skies.
Halloween's unofficial mascots, however, face decline, largely due to a mysterious illness and general misconceptions about their kind.
Fortunately for the world's only flying mammals, the Moraine Preservation Fund has undertaken Project BATitat, converting an out-of-use osprey structure into a roosting station for bats.
The roosting station is being built on Lake Arthur's North Shore, designed to house 6,000 female bats and their offspring.The 8-by-8-foot enclosure, expected to be done in several weeks, will have a 12-by-5½-inch hole on each side for access, and baffles will be installed in the trusses and walls for the bats to roost.The roosting station was formerly an osprey nesting tower, used from 1993 to 1996 to attract the fish-eating birds of prey to Lake Arthur's shores.Four pairs of osprey, which mate for life, now nest annually at Lake Arthur."The osprey all are naturalized now, so they were no longer using the tower," said John Hutchison Jr., chair of the projects committee for the Moraine Preservation Fund, a nonprofit volunteer group dedicated to supporting Moraine State Park.The BATitat likely will attract little brown bats, most common of the nine species in Pennsylvania. Of those, four are considered rare and two are on the state list of threatened species."They do well near the lake shore due to the insect population," said Hutchison, a Saxonburg engineer turned real-estate developer.Hutchison estimates he and other volunteers have put more than 100 hours of work into converting the 18-foot nesting tower into a BATitat. Volunteers include Boy Scout Troop 33 from Prospect, with HP Starr Lumber donating materials.The new BATitat will be available for bats next April as they leave their winter hibernation caves to seek summer roosts, where their young will be born in June and July.Construction of the roost solves a pair of problems: It removes a derelict eyesore from Lake Arthur's North Shore and provides a safe haven for local bats, keeping them out of undesirable roosting places like attics and garages."The old structure was falling down. We had to rebuild the deck, install a new handrail and new trusses, as well as the enclosure," Hutchison said.The roost was built according to state guidelines set by the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which runs a bat propagation program.According to Roger Coup, a Game Commission supervisor, the state is trying to promote the benefits of having a bat population.Coup works in the Game Commission's Northwest Region, which includes Butler, Clarion, Crawford, Erie, Forest, Jefferson, Lawrence, Mercer, Venango and Warren counties."The major benefit of bats to people is the amount of insects they consume on a nightly basis," Coup said, explaining a small brown bat can consume up to 1,200 insects in a single hunting flight."Not only does that reduce the number of insect bites, but it reduces the disease risk that insect bites carry, such as West Nile virus."According to Coup, similar bat roosts have been installed on game lands statewide, and the Game Commission has made efforts to minimize human disturbances by gating off several large cave entrances where bats hibernate in winter.
Elizabeth Wilson, president of the Moraine Preservation Fund, hopes the BATitat can provide a safe haven for bats not only from humans, but from sickness."The bat population in the eastern U.S. is suffering greatly due to the white-nose syndrome," Wilson said.A white fungus encircling the noses of some afflicted bats is most obvious symptom of the disease.According to the Game Commission, infected bats appear to deplete their fat reserves months before they would normally emerge from winter hibernation, and die as a result."At this point, it appears the fungus which appears on the bats is the problem and not just a symptom. It irritates them enough to disturb them from hibernation, forcing them to go looking for food in the winter when there is none," Coup said.An estimated million or more hibernating bats, which include six species across nine states, have been killed by WNS since it was discovered in a New York cave in 2006, according to Bat Conservation International."No white-nose has been found in this region, and we hope to keep it that way. It has been found, however, in central and northeastern Pennsylvania," Coup said."A lot of research has been done in cooperation with other states, like West Virginia, Virginia and New York, where white-nose was first discovered. So far, nothing has been found to counteract it."The largest threat to bats, however, is still humans.The Game Commission reports that, in winter, hibernating bats may be aroused by people exploring caves.Repeated disturbances force bats to squander precious calories needed for overwintering. Caves also may be flooded by dams or dynamited shut.Pesticide use also is suspected of reducing bat populations."People are so afraid of them, and it's so unfortunate," Wilson said. "They're magnificent creatures."
"Bats do not pose a risk, as far as being aggressive to people," Coup said.Reports of bats "swooping" at people are misconceptions, he said. When people walk, especially at dusk, the movement stirs up insects, which is what the bats are after."Bats' sonar system, that they use for navigation and hunting, is so sophisticated that they know you are there long before you know they are there," Coup said.Bats can carry rabies, however, and about 36 cases are confirmed each year in Pennsylvania, according to the state Department of Health."If you find a bat in your living quarters, it's in your best interest to (contact the Game Commission to) have it tested, and to not touch it with your hands," Coup said.He said roosting bats that do not interfere with humans, however, are best not disturbed."We ask people to wait until fall to close up places bats have been staying, so the young are not disturbed, then to consider setting up a bat box for when they return," Coup said."People can do a lot to harm bats, but they can also do a lot to help them."The Game Commission is urging people to stay out of caves to avoid dragging the white-nose fungus from one location to another and to report seeing sick or dead bats immediately.People should also report seeing bats flying during the winter months when they should be in hibernation.That information helps the Game Commission in its quest to determine where Pennsylvania's bats are and when, part of a larger crusade to help the misunderstood mammals coexist with their human counterparts."We have been monitoring bats for several years, and that program has intensified to determine the extent of population damage due to white-nose, or if an area is becoming affected," Coup said.For those wishing to attract bats to their backyards, the state Game Commission offers guides to building anything from a small bat house to a bat condominium in the "wildlife" section of its Web site.Go to www.pgc.state.pa.us/ for information.To buy BATitat T-shirts, go to www.visitbutlercounty.com/shopping.
