For bat researchers, tender is the night

By CHRIS PETERSON

Hungry Horse News

When the pulchritudinous song of the Swainson’s thrush stops, that’s when Lisa Bate knows it’s time to raise the nets.

The nets are not for the birds, they are for the bats. Darkness is creeping in and Bate and her crew of biologists and volunteers are on the search for bats in Glacier National Park, along the idyllic and now silent McDonald Creek. 

Normally, Bate and her team work in a small group in the backcountry, but on this night, there’s about 25 people, all in masks as to not to spread disease to the bats, watching them work. 

The outreach effort is designed to teach the public more about bats, the threats they face and conservation efforts in the park. 

Bate began her interest in bats back in 2009 after reading about white nose syndrome, a deadly infection that was killing bats in caves across the east. 

White nose syndrome is a fungus, believed to be spread by cavers from Europe exploring caves in the eastern U.S. The fungus, which gives bats a white nose, is deadly. To date, it’s killed an estimated 6 million bats in North America and it’s moving west toward Glacier. 

“It’s not a matter of if, it’s when,” she said. 

After training with bat expert Cori Lausen and with grant funding from the Glacier National Park Conservancy and other sources, Bate and her team went to work surveying Glacier Park’s own caves. In addition, they began surveying the entire park itself in 10-by -10 kilometer grids. 

Before the surveys began, there were four known species of bats in Glacier. Today, biologists  have added another six to the tally. 

In addition to using mist nets to physically capture and examine bats, they also use specialized listening devices that can hear the bats’ high frequency calls that are too high pitched for the human ear to hear.