46 2023 Annual Report
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Conservation
Natural Heritage Program
keeps eye on bat populations
The Natural Heritage Program is working to conserve Nebraska's
vulnerable bat species in several key ways.
Program biologists are focused on:
•
Monitoring for the impacts from white-nose syndrome, a disease
caused by a novel fungus that first arrived in New York in 2006 and
has been steadily moving west across the U.S. Three of Nebraska's bat
species, including the northern long-eared bat, a state and federally
endangered species; the little brown bat; and the tricolored bat have
all experienced dramatic population declines from the fungus and are
unlikely to recover for decades;
•
Participating in the North American Bat Monitoring program, a project
developed by the U.S. Geological Survey to collect data on bat species'
movements and activities. As part of the program, Nebraska deploys 30
acoustic monitors each year and completes 30 driving transects with
the help of community scientists, Master Naturalists and biologists;
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Monitoring for all of Nebraska's bat populations across the state; and
•
Working to locate bat overwintering sites.
A tricolored bat is tagged and measured
before being swabbed for Pseudogymnoascus
destructans, the fungus that causes white-nose
syndrome in some species of bats.
