P.E.I. project that's recording Island bat population is hearing grounds for optimism

A project that's monitoring the bat population on P.E.I. is celebrating the sweet sounds of success. 

The P.E.I. Watershed Alliance has been using acoustic monitoring devices to listen for bats across the province over the last five years, in partnership with the Island's watershed groups, the provincial government and the Canadian Wildlife Health Co-operative.

"We've learned that there are bats still all over the Island — maybe not in large numbers as they once were, but we still do have commonly the little brown myotis all over the Island, which is great news because they are very endangered by white-nose syndrome," said Rebecca Ramos, the alliance's monitoring specialist.

Little brown myotis, or little brown bats, and northern myotis, also known as northern long-eared bats, contract white-nose syndrome when fungus in their hibernation area causes them to wake up, burn energy and go out into the winter cold looking for food. They quickly die from exposure.

At one monitoring site in Millvale, P.E.I., Ramos said they have heard calls from the little brown and the northern myotis, both endangered species, as well as the hoary bat.

The Trout River Environmental Committee has been monitoring the site, and has just installed sound and video recorders to track the bats over the winter. 

"We've done this monitoring for four years now. We've picked up a lot of activity at both the well and the control site, but we haven't actually gotten any physical evidence that the bats are coming in and out of the well," Ramos said. 

"To verify that, we will be sticking up a night-vision motion-sensor trail camera at the well to see if we can catch any bats coming out of the well."

More habitat needed

Ramos said it's important to target places where the bats hibernate.

"The more areas that there are for these bats to hibernate, the less likely it is that all of these species are going to get white-nose syndrome at the same time," she said. 

Any time bats are in close proximity, Ramos said there is a greater danger of the disease spreading. 

"Caves or wells have the perfect humidity and temperature to grow white-nose syndrome, and it's also unfortunately the same humidity and temperatures that bats need to survive the winter hibernating," Ramos said.
 
"So the fungus grows side by side with the bat species that are hibernating."

Having more wells for bats to hibernate in will give them more time to develop natural immunity to white-nose syndrome, or be vaccinated by wildlife groups, she said.

What we would like to do is encourage people to contact their local watershed group if they have a sandstone well.— Shayla Steinhoff, Trout River Environmental Committee 

The executive director of the Trout River Environmental Committee hopes to find even more sandstone wells in her watershed area to create additional habitat for bats. 

"These are actually spaces that bats will hibernate in on P.E.I., and this is recent information, so we're just starting to collect data on it," Shayla Steinhoff said. 

"These sandstone wells, a lot of the times people will fill them in," she added. "What we would like to do is encourage people to contact their local watershed group if they have a sandstone well... Then we can come in and put a cage over top of it."

Steinhoff said the cages her group uses are specially built to prevent people and animals from accidentally stepping into the wells while protecting the bats. They have powder coating on the wires and 15-centimetre gaps to let the bats fly in and out without ripping their wings. 

"There really isn't too many places on P.E.I. that they would hibernate other than these," she said. 

"Something that we've built... is actually helping inadvertently. So these sandstone wells are really good to protect."

Counting bats

Another benefit of zeroing in on where bats are known to be living is the ability to observe them at dusk as they come out of bat boxes, wells or other structures.  

"We'll go there at dusk and will count how many bats actually come out of a location," Steinhoff said. "This is probably the best way to actually track population density, rather than just collecting [audio] calls."

As well as placing equipment in proximity to known bat habitat, Steinhoff said they also do driving transects, driving a vehicle with a microphone placed on it along a certain route every year at the same time to capture bat calls. 

The five-year monitoring project is wrapping up soon, but the P.E.I. Watershed Alliance is hoping it will attract funding to continue beyond its planned end date.