On the farm, new allies to save America’s endangered bats

Bats in North America have suffered a massive decline in recent years due to an invasive fungal disease called white-nose syndrome. But while scientists struggle to get a handle on the disease, one Vermont landowner has redesigned his farm to help keep bats around.

Don Mitchell never imagined that he would spend his retirement working to protect endangered bats. The Vermont writer had no fondness for the creatures, and he paid little attention when he learned he had endangered Indiana bats living on his property. But his attitude changed when he found out he could save money on his taxes if he enhanced the land to make it more suitable for the threatened species.

“My reasons for getting involved [with bat conservation] were entirely selfish from the beginning,” Mitchell says, “and I guess I became a believer.”

Mitchell set about transforming five acres of field and forest on his farm in the Champlain Valley into a sanctuary for Indiana bats. Scott Darling, a bat scientist with Vermont Fish and Wildlife showed him how to do it.

“We suggested to Don that he focus on roosting habitat,” Darling says, “as well as try to provide some improved foraging habitat, so there would be areas where these bats could forage in somewhat of an open understory, but still within a forest canopy.”

Indiana bats roost in dead and dying trees, but they also like a species called the shagbark hickory. “They have … this almost peeling bark, that to an Indiana bat looks like dead or dying trees,” Darling says. “They can tuck themselves under the bark and be warm during the day, sleep protected from rain, and still be ready to fly on out and forage at night.”

Mitchell worked to encourage the growth of shagbarks in particular roosting zones, then he set about improving the foraging habitat. Bats tend to hunt for insects around the edge of the woods, which is dangerous because they’re exposed to predators like owls. So Mitchell thinned out all of trees with a diameter less than 7 inches in a patch of forest along the edge of a field. In here, the bats have enough room to cruise around and hunt for bugs under the safety of the forest canopy.

“From what I’ve observed about Indiana bats foraging, these are the conditions that are going to make it right,” says Darling.

Darling's excited to see good bat habitat like this, because bats in Vermont have been hit hard by white-nose syndrome. The fungus thrives in damp caves and mines where bats spend the winter. The hyphae invade the bat’s skin, waking them up from their hibernation.

“Eventually these bats flee from the cave or mine literally in the middle of January when no bat could survive outside,” says Darling. “They were dying across the landscape when whitenose-syndrome first hit.”

Whitenose was first discovered in a cave in New York in 2007, and it showed up in Vermont in January of 2008. “And what’s amazing was that by 2010 we estimate we’d lost about 90 percent of our little brown bats and 90 percent of our long-eared bats,” says Darling.

It’s a catastrophic decline. Recently, Vermont’s Indiana and little brown bat populations have begun to stabilize, but long-eared bats continue to struggle with whitenose. Darling says the goal at this point is to keep the much-diminished bat populations afloat until either scientists can find a cure for whitenose, or the bats develop a natural resistance.

“We want to really minimize any other forms of mortality on our bat population,” Darling says. “A good supply of dead and dying trees, good foraging habitat, good clean supplies of water — those are all going to be important in keeping that foundation of that population going. You know once you’ve lost it, there’s no going back.”

Still, people like Mitchell give Darling hope. “White nose syndrome is the battle for bats,” Darling says. “This is one way that not just biologists but landowners can fight back as well.”

Mitchell worked this land for decades without giving any thought to the bats that shared it with him. Then they became the focus of countless hours of labor, cutting down trees and pulling out shrubs to make his land more hospitable. Along the way his opinion of bats changed. A few years ago he had the chance to hold a couple that Darling had trapped at night.

“They looked like a tiny Icarus, like a tiny little human with wings,” Mitchell says, “and I could look into their eyes and they could look into my eyes, and I realized then that I had crossed some mental bridge and that I cared about these creatures.”

This story first aired as an interview on PRI's Living on Earth.