Citizen Science for Bats

By | Views: 2972 | January 25, 2016

Although we currently know surprisingly little about bats in winter in western Canada, WCS Canada is making giant leaps filling critical knowledge gaps through our on the ground research and citizen science programs. In 2015, WCS launched a new citizen science initiative call the BatCaver Program.

This citizen science program is aimed largely at cavers, mine enthusiasts, and others who go underground in western Canada, with funding support from Environment Canada’s Habitat Stewardship Program, TD Friends of the Environment, Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, and BC Hydro Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program, and Golder Associates, among others. It has been met with overwhelming enthusiasm from the caving community; we are working with the Alberta Speleological Society, the BC Speleological Federation, the Canadian Cave Conservancy, and other groups. Through these collaborations, we now have more than 50 bat detectors deployed in hard-to-reach underground locations across western Canada. Ultrasound recordings made throughout the winter and collected in the spring will allow us to discover new bat hibernacula. As we learn where our bats hibernate, and what species use what types of caves or mines, we will be better poised to help fight the deadly White Nose Syndrome that is expected to spread into the west within the next decade or so.

In a companion project, WCS played an instrumental role in designing aNorth American Bat Monitoring program (NABat) with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, US Geological Survey and US National Park Service. Designed to facilitate monitoring continent-wide bat distributions and population sizes, the protocol is now published and available for download.

This program engages citizens and biologists from across the continent to participate in mapping bat occurrence, and collect count data that will produce large-scale assessments every five years on species diversity and distribution, and status and trends of bat populations. The NABat document provides guidelines for monitoring bat populations, including how and when to estimate clusters of bats for population counts in caves, how to locate maternity colonies, how to collect acoustic data and identify bat species from calls recorded on detectors.

WCS Canada bat scientist Cori Lausen is currently training biologists and managers across North America to conduct acoustic surveys and conduct bat acoustic analysis, including federal and provincial biologists in Canada.

To this end, we are actively raising funds to adopt grid cells to monitor across Alberta and British Columbia. WCS works closely with the BC Community Bat Program and are currently collaborating with several Albertans to launch an analogous AB Community Bat Program. These programs not only directly engage citizens to collect important information on bat habitats, diversity, and distribution, but they provide outreach to Alberta about bat conservation, habitat enhancement and preparation for the arrival of WNS. These community bat programs are making valuable connections with private landowners to spread the word about the value of bats to our economy and ecosystems, the threats that they now face, and how Canadians can play critical roles in bat conservation.

Through the BatCaver program and the Community Bat programs in western Canada, we are coordinating and engaging citizen scientists to help conserve and protect these ecologically important mammals.

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