A brown bat with white-nose syndrome. (Marvin Moriarty/USFWS)
The Iowa DNR started conducting annual summer bat surveys in part in response to the outbreak of white-nose syndrome about ten years ago. DNR wildlife diversity biologist, Stephanie Shepherd, says the surveys have helped them get a handle on the situation.
“With the surveys we’ve been able to show a steep decline, particularly in those species that are most vulnerable to the fungus,” Shepherd says. She says bats who gather in large groups are most vulnerable to the disease, and they’ve seen more impact in eastern Iowa where there are more caves. There’s a national effort to find a treatment for white-nose syndrome, but Shepherd says they are not involved.
“What we work on is collecting the data and sort of looking at these trends. And also, we do a lot of educational and other activities to encourage people to increase bat habitat on their property,” she says. Shepherd says increasing habitat is one way to make bat populations stronger. “Because the more bats that are produced during the summertime, in good bad habitat, you know, the more they’re able to kind of mitigate the effects that white-nose syndrome is having on their populations,” Shepherd says.
She says bat boxes can help, especially if you have a building or home that you want to keep bats away from. “Kind of excluding bats from the structure where you don’t want them and then putting up a bat house, right, there can be a really good way of you know, being conservationist and helping those bats have a place to go,” Shepherd says. “We recommend doing that exclusion and stuff in the August to October time frame is the best time of year to do that.”
She says they also work with people who have wooded land to help bats. “Landowners who have a lot of forest on their land, you know, taking out invasive species like honeysuckle and buckthorn is beneficial to bats. Leaving dead trees standing called snags that bats use to roost in and also making sure that the forest has plenty of species like shagbark, hickory, and white oak that have really loose bark. The bats also use those as summertime roosts,” Shepherd says.
You can find out more about bats on the DNR website.