Alberta Bats | Susan L. Holroyd

Are bats the grizzly bears of the sky? Yes, says Susan Holroyd, a regional coordinator with the Alberta Community Bat Program. It’s why Alberta Community Bat Program and others like it across Canada are working to spark citizen science initiatives to collect data and help communities be better bat neighbours. By email, Susan shared with us why bats are so critical to safeguarding biodiversity and why being a better steward should start with showing bats a bit more love.

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Bats are divisive. People either think they’re cool or they hate them. Why should we all love bats?

​Hate and fear come from a position of misunderstanding. All organisms are an important component of biodiversity and their important rolls in our ecosystems often go unnoticed. One of the reasons people should love bats is their importance for controlling insect pests – this includes biting insects and pests of forests and crops. They are a major predator of mosquitoes, which in addition to being a nuisance, are responsible for several insect-borne diseases that affect people. Bats can eat their own weight in insects each night, and their value to agriculture by providing free insect control services has been estimated (in the USA alone) to be between $3.7 and $53 billion dollars each year. That value does not incorporate their value to the forest industry, which is likely substantial. We are also only beginning to understand the value bats contribute to the livestock industry (consuming blood-sucking insects that affect livestock health).

But why should we LOVE them? Well, they are mammals, like us, and they are incredibly intelligent. We know they can have quite complex social structures (vampire bats for example are amazing). They also are a huge conservation concern because of their slow rate of reproduction – producing only a single pup each summer (that can be 25-30% of their mother’s body weight). And only half of those pups make it through their first winter (hibernation is tough). The truly fascinating thing though is that they live a long time. Alberta has the North American record of a little brown myotis that was banded by Alberta Fish and Wildlife in late 1980s – it was 39 years old when seen in a hibernation site near Hinton, Alberta. For graduate students studying bats, this means that their study subjects may easily be older than themselves! Most people don’t get to see bats up close – getting only brief glimpses of what looks like a sizeable creature flying over their heads at dusk. Once you see bats up close, you see first, how small they are and secondly, how their little faces make them look more like little dogs than anything else. After a good look, most people consider them pretty cute!

What are the biggest bat myths we need to overcome or dispel?

There are a couple of big ones that need to be addressed. The first is about disease transmission. There is a lot of fear around the rabies virus and the belief that “all bats carry rabies”. As bat specialists, we make it CLEAR that all wild mammals pose a risk for rabies and other disease and you should never handle a bat bare-handed (or handle wildlife in general). Bat specialists and wildlife rehabbers all receive pre-exposure rabies vaccine that protects us from the virus and this allows us to safely handle wild mammals. Rabies is transmitted by bites via saliva—if you have no bare-skin contact with a bat, you eliminate the risk of exposure. Any bare-skin exposure though needs to be followed up with a visit to your health care provider. However, although there is need for caution, rabies is typically quite rare in bats. Less than a half of one percent of the free-flying population will contract rabies (bats submitted for testing are often ones that are already on the ground and sick; the rabies rate in this group is a bit higher at around 10%). Our take home message on rabies is that it is a “no-touch no-risk” kind of situation.

The other myth that hinders bat conservation is the concept that bats are like “mice with wings”. However, their life-history strategy of having a small litter size, poor first year survival, and long lifespan make bats much more akin to a large mammal than a small one. Our message is that we should be thinking of bats as “small, flying grizzly bears”. And they warrant the same kind of care and concern as their large, mammal friends.

The last myth is the “bats will fly in your hair” myth. We hear from people who SWEAR this is true—but it is not. Bats will swoop around your head at night if you are walking through areas where you are stirring up flying insects or if you are attracting bugs. The bats “see” the insect swarm above your head as a patch of food. Nothing else. Maybe you look like a weird moving tree. Regardless, their echolocation allows them the amazing ability to navigate in the dark, detect insects and even discriminate between insect species! Personally, I have stood in an attic with about 3,000 Yuma Myotis flying around my head and NONE of them got tangled in my long hair. One did land on my shoulder but looked at me and had a look of “WHOA!!! GETTING OUT OF HERE!” So, I possibly scared it more than it could have ever scared me. 

What role do bats play in a healthy ecosystem; in sustaining biodiversity?

​Bats consume huge numbers of insects every night. A little brown myotis weighs about 7 grams and a big brown bat weighs around 16 grams. You can do the calculations of just how many tonnes of insects are consumed each night provincially. Or even just estimate the amount a colony of 1,000 little brown myotis would eat per night (that would be around 7kg or about 15.5lbs – a LOT of small insects!).

As a result of eating all these bugs, bats also poop a lot. And bat guano (bat poop) is very high in nitrogen. It is postulated that bats are responsible for a significant movement of nitrogen from low-lying habitats (like wetlands) to upslope habitats (where they roost in trees). In the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, bats play essential roles as pollinators of many different plant and tree species (notably several of these plant families produce consumable products that we enjoy in Canada, like bananas and mangos for example). There are bats in several families that consume only fruit and these species are sometimes referred to as “the night gardeners” in their ecosystems. Fruit-eating bats consume their fruit and often ingest seeds. Flying away across the landscape they literally poop everywhere and are very efficient seed dispersers. This seed dispersal helps propagate new tropical forest in sites that have been cleared both naturally and unnaturally. 

Are bats threatened? Should we all know about White-Nose Syndrome?

​Short answer is “yes”. Many bats were considered threatened before white-nose syndrome appeared on the scene in 2006. Habitat loss, loss of productive wetlands for foraging, pesticides, vandalism and disturbance at hibernation sites and maternity colonies, eviction from buildings in the middle of the pup-rearing season, and outright killing of bats has threatened many bat populations. Wind energy developments are increasingly threatening our migratory bats (hoary, silver-haired and eastern red bats). Current studies have estimated that hoary bats could be extinct in several decades based on the current rate of mortality at wind farms. Biologists are currently working hard to try to find a way to combat the fungus that is responsible for white-nose syndrome but it will continue to spread. The movement of the fungus is bat-to-bat so we can’t really stop it. What people need to know is that in areas after white-nose syndrome has decimated bat populations, every single surviving bat will be important to ensure the survival of the species. Also, white-nose syndrome only affects bats (not people) so it is not a human-health concern. 

How important is education to bat and biodiversity conservation?

​Education is critical. Bats are among the most common wildlife in our communities, yet most people know nothing about them. Even some of the best educated biologists often go their whole careers without learning much about bats—this is slowly changing as more people become aware of the important conservation challenges bats are facing. Their habits are atypical among wildlife, and many people mistakenly believe they are like birds or mice, leading to many misconceptions and poor decisions. As people become better educated, horrible acts like exterminating entire maternity colonies will hopefully become a thing of the past. People like you will champion bat conservation when you understand the importance of bats and the challenges they face. Without that knowledge, bats will remain “out of sight, out of mind”.

What needs to happen to protect bats? More protected areas, better regulations or simple stewardship?

​Several things are needed to adequately protect bats. Better legislation and regulations are needed. It should be unlawful to kill or needlessly disturb bats. Stewardship and protections of important bat roosting or hibernation areas should be prioritized, but healthy ecosystems need to be maintained across the planet if we want bats and other wild species to thrive.

Bat programs throughout Canada have been working hard to promote bat conservation. But often this is done with minimal funding. If we want to protect the species that live on this planet, we need to start providing stable funding for research and conservation as though we really care—like we would fund a road or sports stadium.

Does citizen science help?

Short answer is “yes”. If the Backyard Bird Count is any indication, these types of long-term datasets can be extremely useful in tracking trends of various species populations, their distributions, and timing of habitat use. However, we are still in the early days with the bat program data, and bat sightings are far less common than with birds. As well, our bat citizen science projects tend to be focused on the species that use buildings and bat houses (little brown myotis and big brown bats). In Alberta, there are seven other bat species that are not captured in our current citizen science project approach.

What’s the simplest thing one person can do to help bats?

​Talk about them! Make it clear to your friends, neighbours and political officials that bats are a conservation priority. Ask people to be bat-friendly. Share information about bats and the citizen science project. Donate to support bat research and the community bat programs. Use the resources available on the community bat program websites (both Alberta and BC have guidebooks for “Bat-friendly Communities”, “Building Better Bat Houses” and “Managing Bats in Buildings”). Be familiar with these guidebooks and share this information with your friends!

And if they want to get more involved, how can they do so?

​Look for events held around your community to learn about bats! Keep your eyes open for bats or bat signs (like a pile of guano that would indicate the presence of bats) and report the information to a citizen science program (like those held by community bat programs in Alberta and BC). Get involved in your community to ensure that bats have a voice when management decisions are made! Advocate for habitat protection and consider volunteering for local non-profit organizations helping to conserve wild spaces.

Once you become informed, consider hosting your own event – like a tree planting event, river-valley clean-up, evening ‘bat walk’, talk, or information table. Your community bat program can help provide advice and resources needed to support these events. Visit your community bat program’s website to find free guides to help you get started.

Given what you’ve learned through this work – and through your life – what is the one thing you know now that you wish you knew at 15?

​It wasn’t until I was in third year university of an ecology program that I realized that there was a job out there known as a wildlife field biologist. Generations now are likely more aware of these kinds of options but it probably is still rare to know people with these kinds of jobs. Based on what I know now, I might have tried to find people in these interesting jobs while I was still a student and tried to at least volunteer on a temporary basis to get a better understanding of what was involved and to accumulate some real “experience”. Often time and money limit what you can do, but looking back, those moments where you get to “experience” something new are the most valuable. It’s worth the effort to make the stretch.

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