Portraits of Acadia: Chris Heilakka

Chris Heilakka, biological technician, tries to locate eastern small foot bats using radio telemetry and an infrared video camera at Jordan Pond Gatehouse on July 20, 2018.

Yehyun Kim, Friends of Acadia

My work routine is a little different than most people.My day actually starts around like noon or two o'clock and then we go till around midnight or two o'clock. What we do is, we try and track bats and see how bats are doing on the landscape.

I've been coming to Acadia my whole life because my mom was born in Bar Harbor. When I was young, I would say you could see bats every night flying around near our deck. Bats were just something you saw at night. If you were ever out at night, you used to see them. And now, you don't, which is really sad, because of the fungus that was introduced, called Pseudogymnoascus destructans, which produces white-nose syndrome.

We’re trying to get a better sense of how the bat population is doing here. Based on our research, we've seen up to a 95 to 97 percent decline in certain bat populations.

– Chris Heilakka, biological technician

Caroline Byrne, wildlife biologist at Biodiversity Research Institute, assesses the right wing of a little brown bat to judge the species’ health by looking for physical and fungal damage near Jordan Pond on August 15, 2018

Yehyun Kim, Friends of Acadia

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