{"id":19113,"date":"2016-08-19T00:17:56","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T07:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/tracking-juneaus-endangered-bats\/"},"modified":"2016-08-19T00:17:56","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T07:17:56","slug":"tracking-juneaus-endangered-bats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/tracking-juneaus-endangered-bats\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking Juneau’s endangered bats"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cIt sounds a little bit crackly,\u201d Courtney Pegus said, putting his ear to what looked like an oversized walkie talkie.<\/p>\n
\u201cTurn the volume up,\u201d Fish and Game biologist Karen Blejwas told Pegus, who was riding in the passenger seat of Blejwas\u2019 SUV.<\/p>\n
Pegus obligingly turned a dial on the Anabat CF2, a bat detector connected to a microphone on the SUV\u2019s roof. The pair drove at a steady 20 mph near Echo Cove, a \u201cSlow, research vehicle\u201d sign stuck to the rear window.<\/p>\n
Moments later, Blejwas and Pegus heard the same noise, more distinct this time \u2014 a staccato cross between a robin\u2019s chirp and squeaking sneakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a bat. Awesome,\u201d Pegus said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was absolutely a silver-haired,\u201d Blejwas added, identifying the rare species of bat by the noise is makes.<\/p>\n
As part of her work for Fish and Game, Blejwas conducts driving surveys several times a month to help her track the little-understood bats of Southeast Alaska. The nocturnal animals use echolocation to hunt and navigate, which Blejwas records with special microphones; she has been trapping, counting and studying bats since 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know for sure we have little browns, California myotis, Keen\u2019s myotis and silver-haired bats in the Juneau area,\u201d Blejwas said. \u201cWe\u2019ve never caught a long-legged myotis in Juneau but they\u2019ve been found in Haines and Wrangell, and it would kind of make sense that they are here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Citizen scientists in Sitka, Juneau, Wrangell, Petersburg and Haines have conducted the acoustic driving surveys alongside Fish and Game researchers since 2012. In Juneau, Blejwas keeps the survey kit at the Mendenhall Valley Public Library for public use. Pegus tagged along on one of Blejwas\u2019 driving surveys in August to learn the ropes of bat tracking.<\/p>\n
Blejwas\u2019 equipment picked up nine echolocation signals during the survey, what Blejwas thinks are four silver-haired and five little brown bats, mostly located near Echo Cove. It took two and a half hours, starting a half hour after sundown when bat activity generally picks up for the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never heard this many silver-haired,\u201d Blejwas said.<\/p>\n
The bats don\u2019t constantly make noise; Blejwas says if they are on a route they know well, they can navigate using eyesight but still depend on echolocation to find prey, almost exclusively insects.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s usually pretty easy to tell if it\u2019s a bat or not, but we can\u2019t always get the species,\u201d Blejwas said. \u201cThree of the four species that we know we have in Juneau are myotis bats, and unfortunately their calls tend to look pretty similar. Silver-haired is very distinctive, so that\u2019s easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The calls can sound different depending on what the bat is doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re foraging, their calls get very steep and close together. All the myotis do that, so it tends to look really similar. If you get a nice search-phase call, they do have distinguishing characteristics (between the species), so it depends on how close the bat is and what kind of call it\u2019s making at the time to be able to tell the species.\u201d<\/p>\n
The driving surveys are Blejwas\u2019 attempt to get a handle on Juneau\u2019s bat population for Fish and Game\u2019s Threatened, Endangered and Diversity Program. The research project was prompted by the westward spread of a deadly, emerging disease affecting hibernating bat populations. White-nose syndrome has crept westward from the Northeast U.S. by bat-to-bat transmission since 2007 and was recently found on a dead bat in Washington state, a jump of 1,600 kilometers from the disease\u2019s epicenter and the furthest point west white-nose has been found.<\/p>\n
Blejwas hopes the driving surveys will help establish a baseline for Juneau\u2019s bat population, which her research indicates numbers in the thousands, though it\u2019s hard to pin down an exact number. If white-nose does make its way to Juneau, she\u2019ll hopefully be able to recognize a concurrent drop in bat numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe spread of white-nose back east motivated us to begin the study,\u201d Blejwas said. \u201cDriving surveys first piloted back east have been useful in showing effects on bat populations of white-nose in areas where surveys had been conducted pre-white-nose and post-white-nose.\u201d<\/p>\n