Awarded to the Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society to help landowners protect their bat colonies through a variety of actions, ranging from disease surveillance and ensuring safe bat boxes are in place to testing and applying a prophylaxis treatment that has been developed.
PROPONENT: Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society
DESCRIPTION: Bats provide an invaluable contribution to the health of ecosystems and human economies through their role as the primary predators of night‐flying insects. Despite this invaluable role, myths and misinformation about bats thrive and they are often misunderstood and persecuted. Habitat loss either from advertent or inadvertent human activities (e.g. roost destruction, wetland conversion, etc.) represent a large threat to bats, particularly to those species that occur in anthropogenic structures. The most recent and serious threat to bats, however, is from a deadly fungal disease called White Nose Syndrome (WNS). It has decimated bat populations in eastern North America and has recently appeared in Washington State. Due to its proximity, WNS is on the verge of entering BC and bat conservation throughout the province is more important than ever.
In the Columbia Valley, 25% of our bat species (i.e. 3 of 12 species) have been shown to suffer from WNS where it occurs in other parts of their range. It is expected that WNS will have the same decimating impacts to the populations of these species as has been experienced elsewhere. Two of the susceptible species – Little Brown Bat and Big Brown Bat‐ commonly live in anthropogenic structures, many of which are on private property. Engagement and involvement of landowners in bat conservation is therefore critical to their long term persistence.
The Kootenay Community Bat Project (KCBP) addresses bat conservation in three important ways: supporting landowners, increasing awareness, and promoting citizen science. KCBP supports landowners by helping them mitigate bat issues, enhance bat habitat, and encourage them to monitor their bats. We increase awareness by connecting with people through community presentations & events, press releases, posters, and social media. And finally, we encourage with citizens to promote involvement in citizen science initiatives such as the annual bat count.
OBJECTIVE: Overall, the goal of this project is to promote and conserve the variety of bat species (red, blue and yellow‐listed species) and their associated habitats that exist in the upper Columbia River valley. The project objectives are: 1) To promote education and awareness of bats and their habitats; 2) To work with landowners who have bat roosting on their property; and, 3) To gather baseline data and continue long‐term monitoring in the Upper Columbia River Valley region prior to the arrival of White‐Nose Syndrome.
PHOTO: Cori Lausen
