Latest / The Environment in Canada Podcast / Thank Bats This Halloween: Small Heroes That Save Lives

Transcript

Thank Bats This Halloween: Small Heroes That Save Lives · The Environment in Canada Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: In in areas where bats have had major dieback from white nose syndrome, those areas have responded by using more than 30% extra pesticides on crops.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: And in response, there's been an 8% increase in infant human mortality.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: They will respond then to areas where there's a lot of mosquitoes right around someone's house, for example.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you are lucky enough to have a bat colony around your house, maybe you've got a bat box, maybe they're up in your in your roof, then they are going to feed locally and they will keep your mosquitoes down.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: So of course, that's nice just to keep mosquitoes down.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: But of course, nowadays, with more and more diseases that we can possibly get from biting insects as well, that's again a human health advantage.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Keeping the the need for pesticides down obviously reduces costs.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: So they're economically important as well.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're worth billions of dollars to agricultural industry.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's a pretty simple solution, actually.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: You can just put bat detectors on these turbines.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: And when they detect a lot of bats moving through, the turbine blades stop spinning because it's the blades that they either hit the bat or they create a low pressure zone that can kill the bats.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: And it's actually a remarkably easy solution we've known for 15 years.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: But because it's always been voluntary, there's really been no um impetus for wind energy companies to install the technology needed to detect whether there's bats at night, of course, because that's only when bats fly.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And bats only fly at low wind speeds.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: They don't fly at high wind speeds because they can get thrown off course and it's very harder for them to fly in in uh strong winds.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: So at low wind speeds, they're not making uh a ton of electricity, anyways, right?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of a win-win.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of the Environment in Canada Podcast, a podcast about the environment in Canada by Sierra Club Canada.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a special Halloween episode of the podcast.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Connor Curtis, Director of Communications of Sierra Club Canada, and I'm not your host today.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Your host is Andrea Miller, who is coming to you today with another podcast about bats with Dr.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Corey Lawson.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot in this episode, some of the threats that are facing bats, some of the solutions to those threats, and there's some advice as well for you in helping with bat conservation, for instance, installing multiple bat boxes with different heat dynamics.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get started today, just a reminder that you can take action on environmental issues by visiting SierraClub.ca.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: We have tons of petitions, other actions and events, and regular news updates.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can sign up for on the homepage.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find Sierra Club Canada on social media, and you can listen to the Environment and Canada podcasts on the Harvard Media Network, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast also is on CKUT Broadcast Radio in Montreal, 90.3 FM, bi-weekly on Tuesdays, 11 a.m.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Eastern Time.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to click follow or subscribe to get the latest episodes from us.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Dr.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Corey Lawson.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Nice to meet you.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad to have you with us here today.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, glad to be here.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we're here today to talk about bats.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: You study bats.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Funny, when I was preparing to do this interview, I was telling people that I was going to speak with a bat specialist, and the responses were very divided.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some people were like, oh, wow, so interesting.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And other people were like, ew.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm wondering.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Both of those.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm wondering for you personally, what brought you to bats?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: What and what keeps you interested in bats?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was many years ago.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: I I actually don't know what first got me interested, other than the fact that maybe um I was sort of traumatized as a child with my mother locking my sister and I into a into a bathroom while my dad killed a bat in the kitchen.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I was very little.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I think that might have struck me as sort of odd that adults were scared of this tiny little flying animal.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: So so I feel like there was something there already in my psyche when I went into uh undergrad.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh as an undergrad at university, uh University of Calgary, I ended up uh working for a graduate student.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it was sort of a roundabout way how I how I got there.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: But uh but it was love at first bite.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I always uh I always remember the first bat I held was a big brown bat, and it was banded.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there was a colony that they were studying.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember thinking that this bat was likely older than I was based on uh its age from the band, and you can tell like they'd had it had really worn-off teeth.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it could have easily been 30, 40 years old.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, I was an undergrad.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm like, wow, how does such a small animal live that long?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because as a biology student, I was learning all about, you know, case-selected, R-selected types of of species and mammals for for a small mammal, bats broke all the rules.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that stuck with me.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they they do break all the rules, like they they're more like large mammals in almost all life history traits.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so that that inspired me to want to understand them more and study them more.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I stay involved now and still very passionate about researching and and conserving them because there are a lot of species.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: We still don't know a lot about them.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: We need we need to know more.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, um, a lot of them, many uh of our species, especially in Canada right now, are at risk.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: And and so I'm hoping that we can do something to make sure that that we still have bats into the future.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that is so interesting.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea that bats could live that long.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um yes, they so the the rules that they break, number one, they break the the longevity rule, longest-lived um mammal for their size, uh, decades.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, every species is different, but um the example I usually point to is a bat that um had been banded.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: There was quite a few bats banded in the early 70s over in Alberta.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the the last one seen in in the hibernaculum where it went every year and roosted in the same spots every year.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was uh banded 39 years prior to that, and it was an adult when it was banded.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, and so these are some of the longevity records that we have, but we don't know, you know, the the the length of lifespans for a lot of the species of bats.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we do know that they have this high fidelity though, they always go back to the same place, typically every year.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: So as a long-lived mammal, very intelligent.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: They are they they have what we call um high fidelity, or they're even highly phylopatric, meaning they usually just go back to where they were born every year or two, and they'll use the same tree, the same crevice as long as that's there.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and it's so so it's kind of interesting because it actually makes bats very vulnerable because of this.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: This, you know, and they only have one pup per year, usually from for most species.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so between being long-lived and slow reproducing and highly phylopatric and going back all the time to the same habitat, hoping it's still there, um, it just makes them really vulnerable uh as well, which um I find fascinating, but also is is our biggest um challenge with conserving bats.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, so obviously you care about bats.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: I care about bats too.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but why should everybody care about bats?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in other words, uh why are they important to our ecosystems?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Why are they important to humans?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, I mean, it's interesting because we don't see bats and so they typically go underappreciated.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: But basically, we need bats uh in so many aspects of our economy and our ecosystem.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they are the primary consumer of insects.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, they're flying at night, they feed on insects.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: They will feed on insects that just fly around at night, but there are some species of bats that actually also feed on insects that are just sitting there on a leaf.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: So we we tend to say, well, they feed on nighttime insects, but but they can feed on uh a lot of insects, uh, depending on what species of bats are there.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: So as this primary consumer of insects, we know that's important in terms of food security.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like we we have organic farming.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Organic farming depends on there being ways of dealing with pests, insects, without using pesticides.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so bats are a natural way to do that.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: So we need them for that organic component.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: We need them then to keep our pesticide levels down.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: We now know a study that was done a couple of years ago, uh, published in the journal Um Science uh by uh Frank in 2024 showed that there in in areas where bats have had major dieback from white nose syndrome, those areas have responded by using more than 30% extra pesticides uh on crops.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: And in response, there's been an 8% increase in infant human mortality.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so you can imagine this made big headlines.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: And this was sort of something that as bat biologists were we're kind of saying, yeah, we've been telling you this for a long time.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: But now it's finally in the published literature realizing this connection between we need bats for us for human health.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, in addition, they do eat biting insects.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: So certain species of bats will eat will eat mosquitoes.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: They will respond then to areas where there's a lot of mosquitoes right around someone's house, for example.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you are lucky enough to have a bat colony around your house, maybe you've got a bat box, maybe they're up in your in your roof, then they are going to feed locally and they will keep your mosquitoes down.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, of course, that's nice just to keep mosquitoes down.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: But of course, now nowadays, with more and more diseases that we can possibly get from biting insects as well.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's again a human health advantage.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then um, just in terms of the economy, you know, in terms of agriculture, forestry, industries that we depend on, keeping the the need for pesticides down obviously reduces costs.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: So they're economically important as well.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: They're worth billions of dollars to agricultural industry.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it could go on and on.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: We we need bats and they need us right now, too.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Or they need us to go away.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this is true.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe, maybe that's partially true.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering if you could say a little bit about the different types of bats that we have in Canada and maybe which ones are most at risk and why.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so um let me start with kind of North America, roughly 40 species.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, 20 of those then roughly occur in Canada.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I always keep saying kind of approximate or roughly because you know, these animals fly and we do have a changing climate right now.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so are we seeing shifts in ranges?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: We think in some areas we are seeing uh shift in in bat ranges.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but in Canada we sort of accept roughly 20 species.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh 85% of those occur in British Columbia, where I am.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we have uh we have a documented for sure 15 species.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: We have two others that we think are here in in certain areas.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then actually an 18th one that kind of shows up once in a while.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we've got a we've got a lot of bat species.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: There's about 1500 in the world in general, and that's well, over over 20% roughly of of all mammal species.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: So when you start to think about how many different species of bats there are, the reason there can be that many species of bats is because they have diverged, like they they've they've evolved into different niches.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so in Canada, they all eat insects, for example, but they've definitely um pieced apart kind of their their own little niche by feeding on different guilds of insects, different types of insects, different sizes of insects, and roosting in different areas.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Some some roost in more in uh in rock crevices.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, some will roost in buildings.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Over 70% of the species we have in BC use trees to roost in and raise young, but they've still kind of carved out their own little spot.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I like to stress that because too many times we just say bats, as though somehow that describes everything, everything we need to know.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: They're bats, so they need to do this and they live this way, but that's just not the case at all.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: We wouldn't say the same of like hoofed mammals, which is kind of the equivalent taxonomic group, you know, of which ungulates are hoofed mammals, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: And within that group, then we would say with ungulates, we would say, well, we know caribou has different habitat needs and they feed on different vegetation than deer, then moose, you know, then horses.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's funny how, you know, as humans, things that we see and we categorize very clearly, but things that we don't see, things that are hidden to us, and and and especially bats being you know flying at night and so on, they all just become bats to us.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: And yet there's many species and and they're all very different.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's fascinating.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So you had mentioned this previously about white nose syndrome.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: You talked about it.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: But for those of us who don't know what that is, are you able to just explain what white nose syndrome is?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so there's multiple threats to bats um in Canada, which has has led to um a lot of species listings over the time over the last, especially the last five to ten years.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: White nose syndrome is one of those major threats that has resulted in a loss of bats, um, especially right now in the eastern eastern Canada.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Millions of bats have been dying across eastern uh US and Canada since about 2007.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: That was when it was first realized that it was killing bats.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: And and and what they they found was this fungus.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: It was a never-before seen fungus.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was not described by science at all.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it was newly named.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, at the time it was called uh Geomyces destructans, but then since then it was um renamed pseudom uh Pseudogenoascus destructans.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a fungus that we now know has been introduced, likely from a particular spot in Europe, and it's spread kind of through the bat community, mostly bats spreading it to each other.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this fungus then only grows in cold, damp conditions.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: So when the bats hibernate, that's when this fungus will grow on their skin, it'll grow on their nose and their wings, and it does a lot of damage.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: So the bat actually starts to get holes in its wings, it goes undergoes physiological uh changes, like literally um dehydration, and it will arouse out of hibernation.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, typically it's it's in things like caves or mines, but here in the West, they'll they'll use like any kind of rock crevices or tree cavities and so on.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: So when they're in these crevices in the cold, damp conditions of winter, if they have this fungus that starts to grow on their skin, they do generally arouse and warm their bodies back up.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because when bats are hibernating, they basically become the same temperature as their surroundings, typically, which is a very cold body, saves them lots of energy.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's great because there's no insects for them to eat in winter, they just live off their storage fat supplies.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: But when they have to uh warm their body up then to fight off this fungus, they will actually start to groom.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: And they, by having a warm body, they will have an immune system that's functioning again.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: Because typically, when a bat is hibernating, everything is dormant, including their immune system.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: So they'll use their fat, they'll they'll they'll get their body nice and warm, they'll try to fight off this infection, and and then they'll go back down into hibernation and try to save energy while they continue to to hibernate throughout the winter.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: But the more often they have to arouse, use their fat, try to fight off this infection, the more likely they're just gonna burn through their fat and starve.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so by the end of winter, if the fungus itself hasn't literally just destroyed the skin, um, they might have starved.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's multiple ways that they could die.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: And in some cases, even the bats try to escape the their cave or their mine at the end of the winter, but can't fly properly anymore because of the damage.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not a pretty death for sure.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we are seeing it now in the West.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: So it's taken a long time to get over to the West, but we now have white nose syndrome, like well, through it, kind of Washington, it's killing bats here in Canada.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: It has now kind of been found in many places across Alberta.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: So we're seeing that fungus in hibernaculate we know of of bats in caves in the Rocky Mountains and all the way up into the Northwest territories now.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um are there any possible solutions to this?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Where are we in terms of trying to get to a solution?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, okay, this has been a long haul.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Back when the disease was first discovered, there was a lot of research going on to try to figure out something that could be done to try to save the bats.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Focus was on what we called SOB, which was spray on bat.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: And basically, what everybody, most of the researchers that were diving in in the early days were saying, let's find something we can go into the hibernaculum, spray the bats, try to fight off this fungus.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of fungicides, for example, and and various types of other chemicals, some more natural than others, were experimented with.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: And some even have been put into mines and and and try to uh to to cure the disease or get rid of the fungus mid-winter.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: But this whole time while all of that was happening, I was sitting here in the West going, this isn't going to work for us, because here in the West, we just don't know where our bats are.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: So in BC, for example, um, I've had a bat caver program for a number of years now, stimulated by the the white-nose syndrome outbreak, trying to figure out where our bats are hibernating so that we could treat them if the treatment did become available.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: And what we found through hundreds of underground um bat detectors, the cavers were great in helping us try to figure out where bats are hibernating.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: And there's just no one big place.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's a few caves here and there, and some bats here and some bats there, but not like what they had in the east, where there'd be like tens or even hundreds of thousands of bats in one cave.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I really quickly realized this wasn't going to work in the West because it's not like we could go into a particular cave and save a lot of bats.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And even if we could find those caves, accessing those caves would probably be really, really difficult.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: So we took a different approach.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: So back in 2017, Ann Cheapham from Thomson Rivers University and myself started talking about what are some of the potential ways we might help bats in the West to fight this fungus off, even if we can't find them in winter when the disease is happening.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: So we decided to come up with this um probiotic or or kind of proactive prophylactic approach where we could manipulate the wing microbiome of the bats as that first defense.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because when the fungal spores land on the bat, the first thing it's going to do is the splittle spores are going to germinate.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then they're going to try to get dig down into the skin and start to grow.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: But if we could arm the microbiome that's already on the bats with bacteria that would that would prevent those spores from germinating or prevent them from growing the hyphae into the skin, maybe that could help save our bats where they don't even get the disease, then we could we could try to prevent that.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: So we did a swobbing of hundreds of bats across British Columbia.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: And between her lab and then McMaster University, um, Dr.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: uh Jiaping Zhu, he was, he's a fungal specialist and he came in and said, let's let's go through like you know thousands of cultures of these potential bacteria that could be beneficial.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: So between those two labs at McMaster and Thompson Rivers University, they came up with a cocktail of four strains of bacteria that did just this.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: So together, these these bacteria could prevent the spore of the pseudogymnoascus destructans, which I'll just refer to as PD now, of these PD spores.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: If they didn't germinate, um, then they couldn't cause the disease.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so this was looking really good in a petri dish that these would work.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: We did a captive trial in Kamloops in Thompson Rivers University, just out outside of this of Kamloops, actually, in the um wildlife park, and had free-flying uh flight chambers where the bats could just live a normal life, basically.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: They had a bat box, and we started looking at if we put these bacteria on the on the bats, um, what would happen?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we didn't expect, you know, that they would be neg um detrimental in any way because we'd already gotten these bacteria off of bats, right?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: They were naturally occurring on some bat species in small numbers.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and so we were kind of thinking, well, this would be like a Robin Hood approach.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: We take these beneficial bacteria, culture them up, and make sure that all the bats got the beneficial bacteria.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that was sort of our approach.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: But of course, we had to show that there was nothing harmful in doing in doing this.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, if anything, was actually a little bit beneficial because when we looked at the results, the the bats that were getting on the probiotic bacteria on them had just a little bit of less, less inflammation than the ones that didn't.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we thought, well, this is really good.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: The the vet, um, and we had several vets actually that were looking at this project with us.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: We got the thumbs up to go ahead and and try this in the wild then in British Columbia.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: So in 2019, we started in Southwest BC with some study sites of big bat colonies, and we divided them into control versus treatment.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: And the control bats we basically just monitored, and the treatment bats are the ones where we actually went and put this probiotic bacteria into their roost, and that's the catch.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't have to catch the bats and put the bacteria on them.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: We just sprayed it up into their roost, and then the bats would come along.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: Let's say it was a bat box or or a building roost, they would land, they would, they would spend the day on um the plywood or the wood that was making up their roost, which was now covered with with this um freeze dried bacteria that we developed or cultured, and and then they would start to just gradually change the microbiome of their wings so that over time these beneficial bacteria just became part of the natural flora on their wings.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then they would fly off after the end of the summer to hybrid.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we had the high hopes then that once they fly off in hibernation, they would um, if they came across the PD fungus, they would be fine in terms of preventing uh white nose syndrome.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we, you know, we kept doing this for a few years, but white nose syndrome never arrived, and we never saw PD either.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we we thought, well, hey, our probiotic might just be really, really good.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Or more likely it just hasn't spread far enough yet, and we can't test it in southwest BC because we weren't seeing it in our control sites either.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: But what we were starting to see in our control sites was our probiotic.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so at first I thought, oh no, our experiment's been ruined.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: We can't compare control to treatment because the probiotic is is is spreading.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then I realized, wait a minute, that's actually a really good thing for our for this to be used as a disease management tool because the bats, we realized, it makes sense.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: We just hadn't thought about the fact that they they contact each other all the time.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so in hibernation, they're they're nestling together in little colonies.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they do it in the summer as well.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: And they were actually switching roosts a little bit more than we thought they were.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: Once we could track the bats, we figured this out.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: So turns out if we were to treat just some bats, they will spread these beneficial bacteria to other bats that they come in contact with.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's what's made this a pretty powerful, what we think will be a pretty powerful disease management tool.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: The only thing we were still waiting to find out was like, well, how effective is it?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Are we going to save all of our bats, which we couldn't imagine it being 100% effective?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: But what percentage of bats can we save with this?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we're just finding out right now, actually.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, literally this summer, we're crunching numbers from from this past summer in Washington because we ended up using the probiotic in Washington state where the disease occurred.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: So once we realized, hey, we don't have the the disease yet in Southwest BC, we needed to move into Washington.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And we worked then with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and they were fantastic.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: They they set up the study sites as well.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: We had controls and treatments there, and and we've now been monitoring them since 2023, is when we first started putting the probiotic there.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: And we were definitely seeing our control sites were going downhill.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: We had one actually come almost completely wink out.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: We lost almost the entire colony from to white nose syndrome.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: We just this past summer now, we have seen the disease show up in uh some of our treatment sites, and we're just crunching those numbers.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, we don't expect it that it's 100% going to save bats.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: We we never thought that.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: But if we can even have, you know, like even 50% or more would be greater of the bats that received a probiotic actually survive.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's, you know, that's that's a big deal because we can at least keep keep bats on the landscape.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Unlike some of the colonies in the east that were just literally wiped out completely, and where there were none.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: And just like our control site in Washington, where there are basically no bats left, um, that because they didn't receive the treatment.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say at this point we're we're so cautiously optimistic that this could be a widespread disease management tool.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we're still waiting for the final results to come in.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: But in the meantime, we couldn't wait any longer in Alberta.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: Alberta, we went ahead and just got our probiotic in um to to known maternity sites there because they were starting to lose their bats quite quick quickly.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: They had, they were, they're observing um die-off uh at at um, especially in the southern part of the province, a die-off of bats at maternity colonies.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we're fit we're crossing our fingers that that we'll be able to say bats in Alberta now as well, too.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I I hope so.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, there are other threats to bats as well.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um so, for example, wind development is a threat to North American bats.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering why that is and what can be done about it.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so wind energy is uh it's interesting because White Now syndrome affects the hibernating bats, the ones that go into a dormant state for the winter because there's no food.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: The wind energy is mostly affecting the ones that migrate, the ones that move south for the winter into areas where they can still get some some insect food.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's the the sad reality is that all of our species of bats are being affected between typically between uh white nose syndrome and and wind energy, and then add on things like habitat loss from forestry and so on.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: But I would say at this point, the wind energy is at a is it's at an important point in time where changes can be made if regulations were to be put in.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the wind energy industry, I mean, we want it to be green, we need it to be green, but it's not uh green when it comes to bats right now, and that's because there's been no regulations that require that they operate in a way that doesn't kill bats.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Right now, most of the farms still allow uh a certain number of bats to be killed.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the problem um with this is over time, we've got more and more wind turbines on these um potential migration routes where you've got a lot of wind currents that the bats will follow.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: And as you get more and more wind turbines on the landscape, and they're all you know taking a certain percentage of the bats or certain number of bats each year, I should say, that adds up cumulative to a lot of bats, millions of bats are dying from wind turbines across the continent.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the issue we're seeing now is that these are such long-lived mammals that they just can't reproduce fast enough, near nearly fast enough to replace the number of bats that are dying.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh some of these places that have had turbines for a long time, like Alberta, for example, they're starting to notice that there's definitely not as many migratory bats.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: And are we are we facing you know a potential extirpation of some of the species?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that that is on the table right now that that might actually be the case.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: So there they're all um all the migratory species, which are three, uh hoary bat, silverhead bat, and eastern red bat, all three of them currently are federally assessed through the through Casewick, which is not um, there's there's no legislation yet for them, but they are assessed as endangered.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the committee on the uh status of endangered wildlife is Caseywick.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: If we can now see the minister accept that recommendation, they should all become federally endangered and protected, hopefully, but that has not happened yet.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: And each province gets to decide whether they follow the legislation and whether they are going to regulate the wind energy industry.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: And some provinces are not, and some are.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: So here in British Columbia, for example, they are talking of making it, it's all voluntary, sadly.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but the recommendations are to try to stop turbines from spinning when bats are likely to be migrating or when they are detected migrating.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's a pretty simple solution, actually.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: You can just put bat detectors on these turbines.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And when they detect a lot of bats moving through, the turbine blades stop spinning because it's the blades that um they either hit the bat or they create a low pressure zone that can kill the bats.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it's actually a remarkably easy solution we've known for 15 years.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: But because it's always been voluntary, there's really been no um impetus for wind energy companies to install the technology needed to detect when there's bats.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: They could just do blanket, what's called blanket curtailment, where they literally just shut down the turbines during high risk periods.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: So high risk is um during the migration period, which is usually kind of late July to late September or into October, at night, of course, because that's only when bats fly.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: And bats only fly at low wind speeds.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: They don't fly at high wind speeds because they can get thrown off course and it's very it's harder for them to fly in in uh strong winds.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: So at low wind speeds, they're not making uh a ton of electricity, anyways, right?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of a win-win, but again, it's not been regulated.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: So until we see requirements coming in that do not kill bats, like if you just keep killing bats, even a couple of bats per turbine per year over time adds up to a lot of bats.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that's sadly what we're seeing now.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then also there's the forestry industry.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Can you maybe speak about the forestry industry and habitat loss and what can be done about that and in terms of how it affects bats?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so forestry is an interesting one because I I think I mentioned uh that more than 70% of the species of bats that we have in BC, for example, um use forests, use trees to raise young.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: And what's happening over time is that these forests are becoming increasingly young.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Younger trees, they're regenerating forests, they've been potentially clear-cuts.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's just it's just a lot of young forest out there now.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: And young trees don't offer the the crevices and the holes and the cavities that the older trees did.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what most bat species actually need to raise young successfully.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so these are long-lived mammals.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: They aren't in their photopatrick, as I mentioned at the beginning.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not like they're going to just say, oh, this whole area is no longer suitable for raising young.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I'll just move somewhere else.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: Sadly, they they don't do that.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's been um studies in the US Southwest that have shown that if you take water away from bats, you would think they would just move somewhere else, but instead they just don't have young.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: They don't, they because they don't have enough water to to produce milk.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: So the same thing seems to be happening in our forests.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like they're gonna go anywhere per se.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's like this is where they, this is this is their habitat, this is their home range, but they may not have young.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they may do things like even roost in stumps.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: We've seen bats do that.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: So what's probably happening over time, we feel, is is that the the bats are staying, they're still there because they live for decades.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Not like they're gonna drop over dead simply because they don't have the perfect roost to raise young in anymore.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: But if they're not reproducing um at a rate to keep the population up, then we're just gonna see what in it looks like we we've probably been experiencing this now, this long, slow decline of bat populations.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: So the sad reality is forests need bats.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the forestry forest industry needs bats.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, bats are what is is feeding on the myriad of insects that can be causing uh uh problems for uh tree seedlings in particular.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: So pest insects for forests, yeah, we we've got like a variety of those.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's really important when a forest is regenerating that the foliage doesn't get eaten constantly by by pest insects because then it slows the regeneration.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: It can even affect what trees and or what the stand looks like in the end, like is you know, which species is going to be dominant?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's the tree seedlings that do better.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: And we know from from actually fairly recent research that in the presence of bats, there's five times less defoliation of uh tree seedlings.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it can vary by tree.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so bats are really important for for helping uh force regenerate and more quickly.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we we need those, we need those bats.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: But if you if you don't keep the bats in mind as you do the the timber harvesting plans, then you don't have the bats uh around to be able to feed on the insects that um that will be keeping your tree seedlings healthy.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's to the benefit of the of the forestry company really to plan in these patches where bats can still raise young so that they can actively keep their populations up.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: Multiple species of bats are needed because some species of bats feed like on the flying moths, others feed on the little dangly caterpillars, the ones that are or the beetles that are just crawling around.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like you you have different bat species that do different eat different insects.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so we can't just, you know, try to keep some bats or some species.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: We really need a good diversity of bats to stay within our forests.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I've been trying to work on now, too, is working on some, you know, could we work with um like indigenous partners and government partners and try to change the way this is done?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're actually working now directly with the forestry companies as well.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we're doing walk arounds in the forest with them and saying, you know, if you just did this to keep intact bat habitat, once you log this part, this part is going to be benefiting greatly from having kept these bats.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: None of that is policy, none of it is, you know, happening right now.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: But this is what we're working on is best management strategies and working with people on the ground.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um sadly, though, in some areas that the roofs are just gone.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's just not enough roofs for for bats to still maintain that level of of um population um sustainability.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we've been creating fake oil growth, believe it or not.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: In some areas, we have realized there's bats that are still clinging.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: They're not they're not thriving, but they're surviving in some areas.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: So we've created fake oil growth using polymer bark.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's something we we got the idea from Brandon Bark, which is uh a trademark name for fake bark that came out of um Kentucky.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: This bark is actually used on movie theater sets, um, ultimately.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's where it originally came from.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: But we've sort of redeveloped and redesigned working with Selkirk College under the Kootenis and with Okanagan Nation Alliance as this three-way partnership to try to figure out how we can keep bats on the landscape as a stopgap measure.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: We just need to give them the cavities they need under bark.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: So we've created this fake bark.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then if they can start to have young, we'll get through that period, maybe it's 20, 30 years until we see the trees get big enough to host the natural roofs again.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: So this is just a stopgap measure.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're not promoting in any way, like, hey, go ahead and log and use fake bark.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's it wouldn't make sense to do it.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: The stuff is actually quite expensive to make, but but it's working because where we have been installing it, the bats are using it almost in some cases right away.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we know that they're they're having young.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: We've been documenting that as well.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: And um, we've recorded uh nine, maybe even a little bit more.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: We're not completely uh sure on the genetics yet, but it looks like at least nine species of bats.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: We have collected the guano of those species under this fake bark that we've been creating.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that's different than like, say, bat boxes.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, bat boxes are typically used by by usually three species of bats.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so in that way, we're we're kind of recreating this old tree idea so that they have that habitat in places that it's just been completely um decimated.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: That is so interesting that they don't mind the this artificial bark.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, we were surprised too, actually.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you just mentioned bat boxes.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: What what should people know before installing one?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: And can you tell us about them a little bit?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so bat boxes have been very popular over uh the last couple of decades, really.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um growing, of course, in popularity as more people want to keep bats on their on their property for the insect eating services.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: But the unfortunate part about bat boxes is that sometimes people just put up a single bat box.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they might have had like a whole bunch of bats, let's say, in in a in a shed that they tore down or in the roof that they they've now redone the roof of their house, they've excluded them, and they and they'll put up a single bat box.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: And bats, like because again, they're phylopatric, they have that high fidelity to go back to the same place, they'll come back to these these building roofs and realize there isn't access into where they used to be or that building is is gone.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: So they'll look for the next best thing.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's usually someone's bat box that they put up.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if they all try to cram in this one bat box, so this this bat box can become A, overcrowded, but B, it's also only offering a small number of temperature options inside.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas typically a building, the bats can move around and they can find the just right spot.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: Not too hot, not too cold, sort of that Goldilocks approach.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: They can always find what they need to raise a young properly in a building.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: But but when they've got a bat box, it's pretty limited.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: And what we were finding, sadly, we've been noticing over the over the last few years that they overheat, especially with climate change now.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: Just even a degree or two can change these perfectly nice hot bat boxes into lethally hot.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we've seen you know, many bats drop dead, like piles of bats in some cases dropping dead out of out of overheating bat boxes.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: So our caution is is that bat boxes have a place, um, but you can't really ever just use one.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you have to give them uh, we always say use the Goldilocks approach.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: You have to give them the options on any one day, they should be able to find a hot, a medium, and a cold location to roost.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then that way they can choose what they need.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because bats are just funny.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, one of the things I didn't mention in how vulnerable and how they break the rules is that because they fly, they use so much energy to fly that they'd have to eat round the clock, which of course they can't.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: They only eat at night.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so they've got this little trick that they use, which is called thermoregulation.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so their body can can just cool down and save tons of energy, which is what it does in hibernation, or they can go to a place that's nice and hot and let the sun or the sun's energy keep their body warm instead of them creating their own heat like we do.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: So, as mammals, um, most mammals uh maintain their own body heat at around that 37 degrees, we do.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we're just burning our own fat to do it.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: We're always keeping our temperature up.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas bats have this neat little physiological trick where they say, we don't have enough fat to keep our bodies warm at that mammalian temperature all the time.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna depend on the sun to heat our bodies up.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what they do.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: The females then will get into these spots that are nice and hot, let the heat of their surroundings keep their body warm enough to be able to develop the fetus, make the the milk to nurse the young, and then have that young grow.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Again, that little pup needs to be warm, but it can keep warm because of the sun beating on on the uh on the bat box or or whatever roost they're in, whether that's a natural crevice under bark.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's their trick.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: So they they need that heat to be able to develop a young.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: But if it gets too hot, then they die.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: And literally a degree or two can make all the difference between growing well and having a young and and and dropping dead out of a bat box.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: So we just say you need to have the options there.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that at any point, if a bat is, especially now with climate change and these heat waves are new to them as well, uh, they need to be able to flee.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: They need to be able to go to a different box or or different type of roost and be cool and find someplace that that they don't overheat.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's so that's really the main take-home now is like you can still use your bat boxes, um, but never just put up one.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: Put up multiple and make sure that on any at any one point you could kind of see that one would be nice and hot, where another one would offer cooler or or or cooler options.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you yourself have spent countless nights in the field.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: Can you maybe share a moment that changed the way that you think about bats or conservation?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a moment in the field?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: I have had a lot of nights in the field.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's been a lot of Eureka moments in in my career, but I would say the one that's maybe a little more recent in memory for me and one that really changed my program actually, because it's changed our outlook for how we're going to do uh conservation projects.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: Was um there is a there's an area called the Kinbasket Reservoir in the north part of the Kootenai region in BC.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: This area used to be lovely, lovely old growth.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's still some some old growth there, but it's been heavily logged over over the years.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: And we went into this one area a couple of years ago looking for a northern myotis, which is an endangered species in in Canada because of the white nose syndrome.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: And we thought if we could find it, um, we would we would learn what types of trees it used.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um based on the literature, it looks like generally this bat likes old trees.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in that area, previous research had suggested that they're old growth dependent, that they were really going to be only roosting in areas where there was old growth cedar.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and so we went into that area.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Realized, though, how logged it was.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, lots and lots of clear cuts and a lot of young forest from from previous timber harvest.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: And we thought, well, we are it already took us half a day to get into this spot.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: So we were committed.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we thought, you know what, let's just put up some nets, see, maybe we'll still catch some bats.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: And lo and behold, we caught one of these northern myotas.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so the first thing I thought was, maybe the literature's wrong, right?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe these bats don't need the old trees, and they're somehow making do with these younger forests.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: So we put a little transmitter on its back.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: You can just glue one on, and then we radio tracked it for a few days.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: Then sure enough, we found a nice patch of old growth that had been left.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Just a little residual patch of old growth that hadn't been logged.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that was a eureka moment for me because I thought, how small does the pat can the patch be?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: And and do we still have this bat reproducing?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Or is this bat thri uh just surviving and not thriving, right?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to know like, are the bats reproducing there?
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: And if they are, you know, how big a patch do they need, how interconnected do they need to be?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_02: That set forth kind of the next big project for my program, and that is um what we're calling bat friendly forestry, trying to understand what guidance can we give to the forestry industry so that they can keep these.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would say that was a little bit of Eureka moment for me in the field recently, realizing that you know these bats are still out there in patches in our forest and maybe just surviving.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: But can we get forestry on track to to be more bat friendly and keep and keep bats on the landscape for the benefit of the forest and of the bats, obviously.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: Are you finding the forest industry receptive?
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's early days, but yes, so far.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: We have six major forestry companies actually, um, between Alberta and BC, who have said they want to talk and they want to they want to know more.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, how how can because I think they are realizing the benefits that bats bring to forests, and and that hasn't been known, you know, very, very well.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, most most foresters I talked to in the beginning, the foresters are saying things like, well, we like bats, you know, we we want to do good things for bats.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, but do you realize you need those bats?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: And they're like, we do.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: So so then I'm like, yeah, let's let's talk how beneficial bats are to forest uh regeneration.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I they're listening.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I I have some, yeah, I have some hope for sure.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad to hear that.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Can you uh maybe talk a bit about the most promising tools or technologies emerging in bat conservation today?
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: They're emerging, um not exactly, you know, in in what we need, but but there's some really good uh new technologies for sure.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um I would say the blue bat is an interesting one.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um it is a little transmitter you can put on the back of bats, which is Bluetoothing with any devices around.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we can we we're starting to see some cool stuff about bats that we didn't know, because if you put one of these transmitters on and and they're pinging on people's cell phones, sort of like Internet of Things devices all connected to each other, and we start to then see where the bats are going in in more real time.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's really interesting.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: It would be really nice if we could get the satellite technology, because as soon as these bats are outside of various, you know, urban areas of sounds really, we don't we don't have um enough cell phones floating around uh in in the backcountry, for example, to actually figure out where they're going and migrating and so on.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, but that's a you know, it's it's it's a cool technology.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um lots of advances just happening right now in e-DNA so that we can pick up bats, um, the species just through the air.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um as there's been some some research um on that.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: One of my students has been also looking at, yeah, just kind of using the air air filters, uh, running on a little computer fan and and sucking in the air at the entrances of roofs or places where bats might be roosting and being able to tell what species is there.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really exciting.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then genetics in general.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think we're just at the beginning of seeing kind of this explosion of technologies that will help us understand bats, um, even what they're eating, like the the metagenomics of being able to just look at bat guano and tell what insects are being eaten by the bat.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's huge.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: We we're just starting to do some of this.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's amazing how many insects they're eating.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, we're starting, you know, to think more and more about this.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: Is actually really good for insect biologists.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: Bats are a great sampling mechanism to learn where where are there there are certain insects in the diversity of insects.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're learning just as much about bats as we are about insects.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: What role can citizen scientists play protecting bats?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um what are the most meaningful actions?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: I would I would say citizens at this point, the most meaningful thing can really just be providing information.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, reporting where there are roosts or reporting like, hey, I used to have a roost, but now there's not many of them there anymore.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there are community bat programs set up, especially we have um we we have an Alberta community bat program.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: Here in British Columbia, there's a there's a BC BAT program.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: You can just a community bat program, you can just Google it and you'll find their websites and you can report roosts there.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: You can also partake in emergence accounts, which would be really cool because the more we have people out there watching how many bats are you know coming out of roofs, we start to get a sense of where we still have good numbers of bats for for studying and for potential protection, especially you know, for the probiotic uh use in the future and so on.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say that's important.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then just, yeah, reporting all dead bats um to the provinces as well, like so that they can understand when um when there's a disease problem like like white nose syndrome, for example, that's how we typically would find out is through the public.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we had talked earlier about how you know a lot of people find bats kind of icky, shall we say?
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: They have a bad rap in popular culture.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're the spooky Halloween animal.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: So how does that miss, you know, does that affect conservation efforts in any way?
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: Does there any misinformation about bats?
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: I would say we it's been an uphill battle, but the programs like my mine, but and also just community bat programs, a lot of education, more and more information available to people.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think people are starting to realize the importance of bats, but there is still some misinformation and things that really um set back their conservation.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the biggest one right now, especially this summer, has been rabies.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: Rabbi's exist like rabies exist in in mammals.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: We've got bats that will um have rabies, they they can transmit rabies, and you have one has to be aware of that.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think as soon as we start to hear you know stories about people dying from rabies, because it is it's lethal that gives bats a bad rap.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: So people really need to know like if you've encountered a bat, they have touched you, scratched you, peed on you, landed on you, like that's not normal stuff.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: That shouldn't happen.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: And one really does need to just go go to um seek medical attention and make sure that that we don't have these issues that that do set bat conservation back because people are just not aware enough to to know when to be cautious.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: But the other problem is like right now, especially with wildfire smoke and so on, like there and and overheating and so on.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: Bats are coming out.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: We think they might even be coming out more during the day.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: There's more interactions because of this.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it doesn't mean they're rabid, but it but it has led to a fear of this.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we've got bats day flying.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they will day fly if they get really, really thirsty and they get very, very hot.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: Wildfire smoke, you know, that can totally drive them out as well.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many things that are sort of changing, and and we might be seeing more bats than we have in the past.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: So there might be this misconception that that means there's a bunch of reebies.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that at all, but it does mean that everyone has to be vigilant too and know that if you did, you know, come across a bat, don't let your dog touch it.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: Don't touch it with you know anything other than leather gloves if you have to move it.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's just being smart about it.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that will help a lot um for bat conservation and and not being scared of bats, but just being aw aware of them and reporting things, you know, and talking to people about things rather than making the assumptions that that some people do, you know, if a bat's on the ground, it doesn't mean it's rabid, but it but it isn't normal.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you should talk to someone and make sure you know what to do with it.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: If governments across Canada could do maybe just one thing to improve bat conservation, what do you think that should be?
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would say that governments, um, especially in Canada, because each province is responsible for bats.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_02: The federal government is really only responsible for species on federal lands, which is a very small part of the land base, but they're more responsible for you know for things like migratory birds because of the there's an actual legislative component for that.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: There's no such legislation for bats.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: It really is at the provincial jurisdictions.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: So we need each province to get, I think, set up well.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like I would say the most important thing is just information, because every province is sitting with requirements or not requirements to submit data.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: So some provinces accept very little data and or require very little data.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: If all the provinces could start like requiring data to be submitted, acoustic data, like that can be recorded in their acoustics, and we can use that to tell where species are.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: And there's lots of these data floating around all over the country, but they're either not required to be submitted, so that they just sit on people's hard drives or or within reports.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what my big push right now is can we get all the provinces contributing to pooling data?
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: These are these are mammals that move.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: We need to pool the data so that we can and can understand what species we have, where, and where, and and some of the concerns that that we have.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_02: We all have the same concerns.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: And we used to have a coordinator that would help us like at a federal level, the White Nose Syndrome Coordinator.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_02: The federal government stopped funding that one actually just this past year.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so we have no we have no oversight across the country, and every province is operating individually.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I would say my big wish would be for all the provinces to to contribute data and and finances to be able to coordinate among provinces at this federal level.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: Data is everything, you know, they knowledge is power, knowledge is conservation.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering how you work with communities to build a desire for bat conservation.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I do this more and more.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it so a lot of indigenous communities I'm working with with a lot of indigenous partnerships, and what I've done there is I've tried to build capacity with within the community in terms of like getting first of all excited about bats and then and then able to study bats because you know, my team is a small team.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: We, you know, we we try to do what we can uh for bat conservation.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_02: But if everybody, if we could get the community more communities feeling passionate about bats and and understanding how important they are, then um then that goes a long way to to kind of amplifying our efforts, if you will.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so the way I think I I would typically approach this is to get them excited about bats.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes that's just through a champion in the community that really likes bats and and is willing to talk about them.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: And and we do, we work with communities that way.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: The community bat programs do as well.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I I think capacity building for me also is important in terms of like uh who's going to succession, I guess, if you will, because we need enough people that know, not just have passion about bats, but know about bats.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so getting people excited within communities to learn more and actually want to do things like record their echolocation calls and capture and and and understand um things like reproduction and um and age uh and so on, given that these are long-lived mammals.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: We we need more people who are excited about about bats.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so in communities, it it can start as something as small as like a presentation to the community and see who who comes up to you afterwards and wants to talk bats.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's fantastic.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much, Corey, for talking with me today.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've really enjoyed learning more about bats.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks, Andrea.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is this has been great.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you're interested.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: Before we end today, just a reminder that you can take action on environmental issues by visiting SierraClub.ca.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have tons of petitions, other actions and events, and regular news updates you can sign up for on the homepage.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find Sierra Club Canada on social media, and you can listen to the Environment in Canada Podcasts on the HarbGo Media Network, Spotify, I have a podcast at Hot Radio and YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast also airs on CKUT Broadcast Radio in Montreal 90.3 FM bi-weekly on Tuesdays at 11 a.m.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: Eastern time.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to click follow or subscribe to get the latest episodes from us.