Climbers can help with bat conservation because we can help scientists find new
locations and new habitats that bats live in. And the more that we as climbers
can help biologists, the more that there's an opportunity to be proactive
and to show that as a climbing community, we can work alongside conservationists
and managers and work in a collaborative partnership. Because yeah I mean if I
know to look for signs of bats and to report them I'm absolutely happy to do that.
You know obviously we love being out here. We love the nature. It's part of the
reason we do it, and so being involved in that conservation effort is certainly
something that I'd be interested in putting effort into.
The dream goal for Climbers for Bat Conservation is to develop a community group like climbers
that are so impassioned by their role in conserving resources like bats that we
develop a new information resource that guides bat biologists and how they
identify places to monitor and conserve bats. The only thing that we've asked
climbers to do is provide information about where they were, where they were
climbing, when they were climbing, and if they saw bats. And that is enough right
now for us to be able to target areas if that we think would be valuable for
monitoring. Because white-nose syndrome is the title of a disease that's now
impacting bats caused by a cold loving fungus, and that disease has claimed
millions of bats in eastern North America and it's moving its way west. And
one of the things that we realized in Colorado and in many western states is
we don't have a really good idea where some of those hibernating bat colonies are.
And so we'd like to use the skills that climbers have and canyoneers and
hikers to basically be more eyes on the landscape to help us look for signs of
bats: information about where they might be found, where they're roosting. And one
of the reasons why it's an advantage that we know about white nose
and are doing this work now is that we can start to think about ways to address
it before it gets here. Well, I'm looking for bats on Devils
Tower National Monument and what I'm doing is using this endoscopic camera.
And we poke around inside the cracks and try to get as deep as possible in areas that bats may be
roosting during the day and it's important to be gathering data on our
bats right now because there is a disease, it's called white-nose syndrome,
and a lot of the bats out east have been really wiped out. We don't have in
Wyoming yet so we're going to get our baseline data in order, and we barely
scratched the surface on the Tower. And not not only the Tower but other
climbing areas out west. So climbers can help us because there's
so many other climbers. If they ever see a bat up on the Tower while they're
climbing or if they hear one they can go back down to the kiosk when they're done
with their climb and report it. We have little data sheet like hey I found this
bat, on this climb, you know, on this day, and about where in the climb you can put
on there, and then that'll help us out. The next day we can head up there and
hopefully the bat is still roosting there. We can collect data on that bat:
what kind of crack it likes, how high it is on the Tower because
right now it's you know it's kind of a needle in a haystack. So we have a better
idea of where we're heading that can be a big help if climbers are willing to to
let us know where to find some bats that they might have come across.
There's a couple different ways that we monitor bats. We use mist netting to capture them
in nets and we also set up acoustic detectors to try to find the bats
acoustically flying by and get some activity rates and also identify those
species. We're trying to get a basic idea of the amount of species that are on the
Monument property and also ways that they're using the landscape and use the best
management practices to protect them.
The effort to conserve bat species from white-nose syndrome is a big interagency
response. We have been working with national forests and we've been working
with Matt Stefanich. He's a biologist there, and Matt and I have set up some
acoustic detectors together. We've also talked about how to best manage the
species and respond to the disease if it were to come. Until a few years ago the
Black Hills National Forest and Devils Tower National Monument really didn't
have a working relationship where we did a lot of things together. But
unfortunately it took a disease like white-nose syndrome to get us to the
point where we need to recognize bat habitat requirements, and Devils Tower
being a close neighbor to us we've really had an opportunity recently to
join forces and combine our knowledge and work across federal agency lines to
try to understand what is good for the bat and for bat habitat. But we can't do
any of this by ourselves and any information we can get from climbers,
from rockhoppers, from hikers, anybody that's out there where we have bats to
help us identify a suitable roost habitat for these bats, where they see
bats would be a huge help to us in understanding what these bats need to
survive.
The draw for the public in Grand Staircase is the variety. Look behind
us. We got Calf Creek Falls here. Absolutely stunning. You have this desert
environment with an oasis in the bottom of it, but there's a reason this was the
last place that in the United States to be mapped. It's because it's very incised
with canyons and I think monitoring for bats in the Grand Staircase is important
because it's going to give us a baseline of information of what do we have here
currently without white nose, assuming it's not here. What we have is a
landscape with a lot of sandstone, and cliff country with cracks and crevices,
and flakes of rock and what that creates is really good roosting cover for our
bat species. So the canyoneering community can be
very important in giving us information about what's out on the landscape. As the
canyoneers are making their way through these areas what they should look for is
the staining of rock. So you may see up in some of these crevices what looks
like some drippings and what that is is it's urine and guano that we would look
for to begin our monitoring to see if bats are indeed using an area. These
canyoneering groups especially are important because they get to places
where even ninety percent of the general public that comes here is not going to
go. And so they can give us information that could be useful to us as we try to
manage the monument. And the biggest challenge is trying to figure out how
many there are really and part of that is Utah's crevice roosting bats roosts
in handfuls. Twos and threes. Ones, twos and threes, and they're spread everywhere,
so it's kind of hard to really get your handle around that. So there's a lot of
cave and cliff roosting opportunities here, which is where the climbers and
canyoneers would come in because it's important to know where bats roost, so
we can protect those roosting resources. What I would suggest to cavers and
canyoneers and climbers is that they kind of use the same attitude that
a medical professional does: do no harm. And that can be in two different ways.
If you do come across bats, please do tell us about them, but if you can avoid
them, please do so. The other way to do no harm is to not bring any
equipment into Utah or a state where white nose doesn't exist from a state
where it does exist, unless that equipment is brand-new equipment. And
that's the kind of cooperation that's going to help us keep our bats safe.
Yosemite is one of the most popular places to climb in the world. It's iconic.
It's a place that climbers come from all over the world. We have such an
opportunity here in Yosemite to interact with the climbing community, to build
support among climbers and among scientists for bat conservation. And
climbers are inherently environmentalists. They love the
environment. They love the wild places. I think that's part of the draw, so it's
important that climbers be aware that they can look for bat signs. They can look
for guano and dark streaking where bats have been, and if a climber encounters a
bat, they can record the route, the pitch of the route, the conditions (what the
weather is like), and also the time that they encountered that bat. And that will
be communicated to our biological technicians, and we'll follow up on that
information and monitor those bats. Our mission is to preserve and protect these
resources for the enjoyment of future generations, and those are our kids.
And we want kids to get fascinated by bats and to carry that ethic throughout their
lives: that we share this space with wild things and that we need to continue to
protect them and protect the habitats that they live in.
Acadia National Park has really led the charge for bat research in the entire state of Maine.
And you know there's a group called the Maine Bat Working Group and the plan for
us is to find where those remaining population of bats are and do whatever
stewardship we can to grow the population into the future. In 2007 we
had a robust population of bats, but then once white-nose syndrome caused massive
mortality to bats hibernating in caves, our populations dropped. And
species that were once the most common on the island, little Browns and northern
long-eareds, are virtually gone. So the Fish and Wildlife Service identified two
critical phases of the bats' life stages. One of them is in the winter and
hibernation, and the other is during the maternity period. We are hoping that some
bats that somehow survive the fungus, they'll go forward and reproduce and
start this slow process of restoring bat populations. That's why it's important to
protect those two habitat factors, because they're already struggling with
a lot of situations, so the more we can learn about those two key components the
better off we're gonna be. And climbers can be really critical in us being able
to achieve a chance of restoring bats. Because we suddenly realized that bats
were staying in places besides these big large mines or caves, what we now call
non-traditional roosts. And those non-traditional roosts are talus slopes
or rock faces because those have made these sort of small miniaturized caves.
So by having that information at different cliff faces where climbers are
or people are hiking or walking and just reporting that they saw a bat out on the
landscape pretty much can give us an idea then of where we might start to
focus attention. Because Acadia has hundreds of cliff faces and probably as
many talus slopes and the more we get input from scramblers, hikers, and
climbers starts to tell us all kinds of stuff about what those bats are seeking
out. That is critical information. Then it's a cooperative venture that is
really winning for everyone.