Photo credit: Juliet Craig

Awarded to Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society to restore and secure anthropogenic roosting habitat for bats by locating, creating, and monitoring roosts, and communicating with landowners.

PROPONENT: Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society and Kootenay Community Bat Project

DESCRIPTION: The East Kootenay bat community is highly diverse, featuring 12 distinct species with varying foraging and roosting needs. Unfortunately, two building-roosting species, (Little Brown Myotis, listed as endangered federally and Yuma Myotis, vulnerable in BC), are facing significant mortality due to white nose syndrome (WNS) in NW Washington, and WNS is spreading through the BC border. This poses a severe threat to these bats, as Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), the fungus responsible for WNS, was found in a guano sample in the Grand Forks area last year. These two species are also the most commonly found in buildings in the Kootenay region. As this disease continues to encroach on BC, there is increasing urgency to build resiliency into our populations of western species known to be vulnerable. The most proactive action that we can take is securement of optimal maternity and breeding habitats for these bats.

Our long-term goal is to restore and secure anthropogenic roosting habitat for bats. In the East Kootenay, including the Columbia Valley area, our project entails locating, creating, and monitoring roosts, and communicating with landowners. This project will build a bat condo on private land in Fairmont Hot Springs, to provide habitat replacement to a local bat colony of Big Brown Bats, and complement a growing network of condos already built or under construction in the East Kootenay.

OBJECTIVE: This project has the following objectives:

    • Create and replace habitat for multiple species of building-roosting bats.
    • Create an interactive map of all known roosts in the CVLCF area.
    • Secure and protect bat habitat by supporting and educating Columbia Valley landowners who have bats and provide region-specific guidance for roost protection, enhancement, or replacement.
    • Expand the annual BC Bat Count Initiative by recruiting and training volunteers.