Awarded to Wildlife Conservation Society Canada to restore natural — and provide artificial human-built — roosting habitat for bats in the Columbia Valley, and to monitor their abundance and diversity.

PROPONENT: Wildlife Conservation Society Canada

DESCRIPTION: The long-term goal of this project is to restore natural, and provide artificial human-built, roosting habitat for bats, and to monitor abundance and diversity of these nocturnal flying insectivores, which are a critical component of healthy ecosystems. The project will use recordings of their high-frequency echolocation calls, colony emergence counts, site visits to landowners, genetic sampling (bridges, roosts), and creation of old-growth tree mimic roosts. This will mitigate loss of habitat, and build population resiliency in the face of disease.

OBJECTIVE: The objectives of this project are to (1) Enhance bat habitat and fill critical knowledge gaps about what BC species use anthropogenic created tree roost structures, (2) Create habitat for building-roosting bats and aerial insectivores (ie. swallow-bat condo), (3) Establish baseline species diversity and relative abundance, (4) Support Columbia Valley area landowners who have bats.

PHOTO: Cori Lausen/WCSC

Watch this video for an excellent overview of the project.