Photo By Michael Strasser | National Bat Awareness Week is Oct. 24-31, and there’s no better time to get up to...... read more read more
FORT DRUM, N.Y. (Oct. 25, 2024) -- National Bat Awareness Week is Oct. 24-31, and there’s no better time to get up to speed about Fort Drum’s nocturnal neighbors.
Community members can find a lot of information about bats inside the Fort Drum Natural Resources Outreach Facility on Col. Reade Road, next to the 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum Museum. And if you happen to visit during Chris Dobony’s shift, you can hear from the wildlife biologist who has been monitoring the bat populations on post since 2003.
Dobony, who specializes in endangered species, said there are nine bat species in upstate New York and at Fort Drum.
The little brown bat and big brown bat are most common in this area, and they can be found in human dwellings or roosting in trees during the summer. Both species will hibernate in caves or mines during the winter.
“These two species tend to utilize buildings more so than any of the other species that we have,” Dobony said. “And they are the ones that are most likely to be found in buildings on Fort Drum. There are even special ‘houses’ for the little brown bat in the LeRay Mansion District.”
In 2004, two bat houses were constructed to provide a better alternative than roosting inside LeRay Mansion. Each one is capable of housing roughly 1,000 bats at once, but they tend to favor one house over the other.
“Historically, the mansion had bats living in the attic spaces long before I started working here 20-plus years ago,” he said. “We put the bat houses up, and they kind of moved out of the mansion mostly by themselves. At one point, we had probably close to 1,500 bats living in the mansion.”
There are four other cave-dwelling bat species in the area: the Indiana bat, the northern long-eared bat, the tri-colored bat, and the small-footed bat.
Two species – the northern long-eared bad and the Indiana bat – have protected status on Fort Drum under the federal Endangered Species Act.
“We confirmed Indiana bat on post in 2006, and that was our only endangered species here for a few years,” Dobony said. “Then a disease called white-nose syndrome started causing impacts to cave-hibernating bats in particular, which caused huge population declines in the northern long-eared bat, the tri-colored bat and the little brown bat, as well as the Indiana bat.”
This led to the federal listing of the northern long-eared bat in 2014. Dobony said the tri-colored bat and the little brown bat also are being considered for federal protection due to the large losses from white-nose syndrome.
To illustrate the severity this disease is having on certain bat populations, Dobony said there were approximately 1,200 little brown bats living in the bat houses at LeRay Mansion in 2008. By 2010, it dwindled to approximately 155.
“Luckily, little brown bats seem to have some resiliency to the disease, and we now have around 650-700 bats back living in the one house,” he said. “We had an almost 90-percent decline of the little brown bats after white-nose syndrome hit, but it has been slowly creeping back up.”
Fort Drum also has three migratory tree bats that don’t spend their winters in New York: the eastern red bat, the hoary bat, and the silver-haired bat.
“Because they don’t typically hibernate in caves, these bats are not as exposed to white-nose syndrome,” Dobony said. “Tree bats tend to migrate south and stay out on the landscape as much as they can in the fall and winter. They will roost in different species of trees, moss, shrubs, and sometimes structures (in the case of silver-haired bats).
Dobony said they will sometimes go into torpor – a kind of temporary hibernation – for short periods in leaf litter on the ground.
“They’ll curl themselves into a ball under the leaves temporarily if it gets cold,” he said. “But most of the time, they are flying south and staying in areas warm enough to forage.”
In addition to disease, bat populations are impacted by loss of habitat.
“When we first confirmed the Indiana bat on post there was a lot of development going on in the town of LeRay, which was fragmenting the habitat,” Dobony said. “The bats were flying between the Glen Park hibernaculum just off the Black River to areas within the town of LeRay and on Fort Drum. The development was reducing the amount of area they had to roost during the summer, increasing their energy use by having to find new areas to roost and increasing their risk of predation by owls and hawks.”
Bats also can be killed by other predators, including raccoons, snakes, and feral cats. While people do occasionally kill bats, the effect of human activity on most of the cave bat populations is mostly indirect from habitat loss and tree removal.
“In order to minimize our impact on bats on Fort Drum, we have restrictions for cutting trees between April 15 and Oct. 15, because that’s the time of year when bats are out of the caves and on the landscape,” Dobony said. “Cutting or knocking down the tree where bats were roosting could cause the bats to leave the area or lose the pups they were raising.”
Dobony recommends that landowners with forested lots used to log or cut firewood should perform those activities during the late fall, winter, and early spring to minimize harm to bats and other species, like migratory birds.
Exterior lighting from development is also a concern because it can cause bats to abandon or avoid areas, and lead to more energy expended to fly and forage at night. While some bat species may be attracted to insects drawn to the lights, bats also are exposed to higher predation risk if they use these lit areas. This is why representatives from the Fort Drum Environmental Division work with master planners, engineers, and contractors on any new construction projects or development within the cantonment area.
“I review pretty much all of the construction projects that occur on Fort Drum and provide input on the type of lighting that should be used for a specific project,” Dobony said. “We try to minimize the amount of light that we’re putting on the landscape or utilize lights that are less reflective and don’t cause light trespass into areas that don’t need to be lit.”
They also established a 2,200-acre Bat Conservation Area to protect bat roosting and foraging locations from permanent development.
For an animal seldom seen around post, Dobony said they contribute to the overall well-being of the Fort Drum community by their very nature as insectivores. Community members annoyed by having to swat away pests during picnics or on a trail walk should consider bats as their allies, as they can eat up to half of their body weight every night.
“While bats will eat mosquitos, they actually prefer going after a larger meal if they can,” Dobony said. “They typically consume other flies, moths, beetles, and agricultural pests, with some species catching their meal right out of the air, and others gleaning insects from foliage as they fly by.”
Dobony said it is rare to receive reports from Fort Drum residents about bat sightings, and there are few documented instances of bats in buildings.
“We’re lucky in that regard,” he said. “There are some installations that have a lot of bats in buildings across their cantonment area. Right now, we mostly deal with the mansion, but the vast majority have moved into the bat house.”
However, if a Fort Drum community member finds a bat inside a building, he or she should immediately report it to the Natural Resources Branch at (315) 778-6348 or Pest Control at (315) 772-2072.
To learn more about bats at Fort Drum, as well as other endangered species, visit the Natural Resources Outreach Facility on Col. Reade Road, next to the 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum Museum. Additional information also can be found at https://fortdrum.isportsman.net.
| Date Taken: | 10.25.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.25.2024 11:36 |
| Story ID: | 483933 |
| Location: | FORT DRUM, NEW YORK, US |
| Web Views: | 60 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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