Conservation Corner: May 21, 2001

Bats
by James L. Cummins

Dr. Merlin D. Tuttle, the founder and Executive Director of Bat Conservation International, is one of our nation's foremost authorities on bats.

Bat Conservation International has created an educational video titled "Building Homes For Bats." It is narrated by Dr. Tuttle, which features some very successful bat house builders. They explain how they attract bats. Why attract bats? You ask. Not only do bats reduce insect pests, but they are also fascinating to watch.

Wildlife biologists have helped many homeowners remove bats from their attics and transfer them to bat houses on an outside wall of the house or to a high pole in the yard. By placing a piece of plastic or netting over the top of the bat hole on the outside of the house, bats are able to fly out because the sheet is open at the bottom, but they are blocked upon return. A bat house placed close to the old hole will provide them a new home. When people, who are often frightened by bats close to their homes realize how many insects are being eaten nightly by these flying mammals, they usually want the bats to stick around.

The tape also includes a bat house building workshop that explains how to build a bat house. The house provides vertical roosting chambers set 3/4" of an inch apart, a peaked roof to keep out rain and a grooved panel at the bottom, "to give bats a leg up, so to speak, when coming in for a landing." In Mississippi, bat houses should be painted a light color so the house will not absorb a lot of heat. They should be mounted on high metal poles or a building near a water source, like a lake, pond, creek or river.

Plans for bat houses, with precise, clear instructions, may be ordered online at www.batcon.org or by telephone by calling 1-800-538-BATS. "We continue to make a lot of progress in educating people about saving bats," Dr. Tuttle said. "But it's an uphill battle because of the exaggerated headlines people still see about bat rabies."

Contrary to what you have heard, bats will not fly into your hair nor are they more likely to carry rabies than any other wild animal. "In the last 20 years, we've averaged 1.5 human cases of bat rabies cases per year in the United States and Canada," he said.

There are 1.5 million bats living under the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, Texas. "If bats are even remotely as dangerous as people say they are, people would be dying like flies in Austin," he said. "But we haven't had a single problem."

James L. Cummins is Executive Director of the Mississippi Fish and Wildlife Foundation in Stoneville, Mississippi. Known as "Wildlife Mississippi," the Foundation is a non-profit, conservation organization founded to conserve, restore and enhance fish, wildlife and plant resources throughout Mississippi.