INDIANA – The Department of Natural Resources wants your help counting the number of bats you see fly out during a few evenings this summer.
Counting bats as they emerge from known roosts helps us monitor the reproductive health of bats across the state and is a great way to get outdoors for some fresh air, whether on your own or with your loved ones.
Participants must have bats roosting on their property or permission to enter a property where a roost occurs. Possible roost sites include trees, bat houses, barns, attics, outbuildings, and other structures.
On each night of surveying, volunteers count the bats that exit the roost and record weather information. Each survey takes about an hour and is conducted on eight to 12 nights from mid-May to mid-July.
Indiana’s Wildlife Diversity biologists have monitored winter populations of bats in caves and mines since the mid-1980s, but less is known about the status of bats for the remainder of the year. Certain species roost colonially in structures. This provides an opportunity to study bats in their summer range while allowing the public to contribute to scientific investigations. Two species that tend to roost in structures in Indiana are the big brown bat and the little brown bat. Historically, both species have been common in the state. However, white-nose syndrome has drastically reduced the population of little brown bats in the eastern United States, including Indiana.
Roost sites are critically important in the daily life of a bat. They provide shelter during the day when bats are not active. For female bats, a roost offers a safe place to give birth and rear young. If disturbed at this sensitive time, adults may abandon the roost and their young. Most bats in Indiana give birth to just one pup each year. This low birth rate makes it difficult for bats to rebound from severe population declines, like those caused by white-nose syndrome. If you have bats roosting on your property in the summer, please do not disturb them.
Information from the Summer Bat Roost Monitoring Project will help biologists evaluate roost selection, population trends, species distribution, and potential impacts from disease.
To learn more about this project, email helpbats@dnr.IN.gov or call the Bloomington Fish & Wildlife office at 812-334-1137. To sign up for the project, visit the Division of Fish & Wildlife’s volunteer page and select “Find an ongoing service project.”
