Workers must clear trees before Indiana bats' return
Associated Press
FAIRLAND, Ind. - Shelby County road crews must remove several large trees alongside a major road project by Saturday to make room for the Indiana bat's annual migration.
The project to widen Shelby County Road 400 North near Fairland is part of an ongoing effort to improve the main road connecting the suburban Indianapolis cities of Shelbyville and Greenwood.
The endangered Indiana bat is expected to emerge soon from hibernation and begin migrating to its summer habitat in northern Kentucky and southern Indiana - including Shelby County.
"The Indiana bat winters in southern Indiana and northern Kentucky in caves," said Scott Roush, project manager of Strand Associates Inc., a Columbus-based engineering company hired by Shelby County to oversee the road project.
"In spring, summer and fall, it leaves those caves and goes to other areas around the state. Shelby County, as well as surrounding counties, are within the area that the bats could summer," he said.
Because the migrating bats might nest in trees slated for removal, the construction plans stipulate that any trees over roughly 14 inches in diameter must be removed before April 1 to protect the bats.
"Its not to say that there is any suitable (bat) habitat along the Phase 3 portion of the project," Roush said. "But as a general condition on all projects, the state asks that no large trees be removed after April 1 on the chance that a bat may want to nest in a tree along the roadway."
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