Bat House Forum

[CObats]

I am working on an effort to place 20 bat boxes (the nursery roosts that can hold up to 500 bats) on some property south of Denver. I am wondering if there are any articles out there (peer-reviewed or otherwise) that speak to how bat houses can increase the populations of bats in an area by providing attractive roosts. If anyone can point me in the right direction for statistics I would really appreciate it! I'm a wildlife biologist and imagine that this relationship hasn't been studied all that thoroughly - in order to show whether the introduction of a bat house significantly increases bat populations you'd have to first determine what the average population is without bat boxes...which would either require a mist-netting operation and then extrapolating the population from that number, or using anabat or sonobat to get a population estimate (the latter being probably more accurate/likely).

[Terry Lobdell]

I don't know of any articles like that.......I have 3 locations with maternity colonies of little brown bats where I have doubled the number of bats roosting in my bat houses.....

Bat Conservation International might be able to point you in the right direction.......

John Chenger of Bat Conservation and Management might also be able to help you out........

[CObats]

I thought BCI would have some info to this effect on their website, but I couldn't find anything...I have some contacts there so I could ask around, just wanted to get this out to the great "bat enthusiast" public first to see what came up. Thanks for the help!

[Dave Miller]

On BCI's website you should be able to find archived issues of "The Bat House Researcher" newsletter. I would guess that any population data/reports related to bat houses would be in those. I believe Mark Kiser ran that program and he had a bat house data collection process running for about 10 years which included bat house occupancy counts over time. However I don't recall any "pre-bat house" count questions on the form, probably because the average bat house enthusiast wouldn't have a way to accurately count bats other than looking in their bat houses or doing an exit count.

I would start by tracking down Mark and asking your questions to him directly.

Dave

[Terry Lobdell]

I just remembered I have a copy of "Bat Research News". It is a compilation of recent bat research projects. Kent Borcherding was kind enough to mail me a copy a couple years ago........the issue I have is from Winter 2006. It has I'm guessing over a hundred abstracts of bat research.....I will try to get more detailed contact info and post a link for you!

Here is a link to a copy I found right online:

http://www.batresearchnews.org/pastvolu ... l41-50.pdf

[Terry Lobdell]

Here is another good link:

http://www.batresearchnews.org/about.html

[CObats]

Thanks! I'm checking out the Bat House Researcher and the other resources. This question arose because I coordinated about 40 volunteers from 10 different corporations with office space in Denver to fund and construct 20 bat boxes on this piece of property (we had a local wood worker create bat box kits to make it easy for folks to put them together). We're going to have a ribbon cutting ceremony later this month when we put the boxes up and I'm writing a press release so we can get some media attention...so basically I'm looking for a good statistic or quotation I can use that's backed by science that speaks to the importance of providing these artificial structures for bats.

When we have the event I'll make sure to put photos up on this forum. Thanks again!

Kristin

[Terry Lobdell]

Another thing I just thought of is facebook........there is a surprising number of bat biologists from all over the world on facebook........a lot of people involved in bat conservation are now networking via facebook including Merlin Tuttle, to many bat rehabbers and bat house enthusiasts like IowaNate and myself....