Bat sleuths burn midnight oil

[Wayne Harrison]

Researchers go nocturnal as the BLM eyes whether regional fuel development will harm the mammals.

By Nancy Lofholm
Denver Post Staff Writer
DenverPost.com

The Bookcliff Mountains - The nighthawks are sailing end- of-day thermals through the canyon. The coyotes are tuning up their yips from the shadowed hillsides. The pond shining in the gathering half-moon darkness is so busy with bugs that it looks like it is being pelted by raindrops.

And on the bank, five people stand with lamps strapped on their heads. They watch the cattle-trampled oval of murky water as if they are waiting for a performance to begin.

At 9:04 p.m., it does.

"It's showtime," announces researcher Alice Chung-MacCoubrey, who had correctly predicted - to the minute - when the first bat would appear out here, an hour's jouncing ride north of Mack and just miles from the Utah border.

Chung-MacCoubrey, a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, is spending her nights out here tromping through muck, being bombarded with bugs and examining one of the world's most misunderstood mammals in a study for the state office of the Bureau of Land Management.

The federal agency is spending $15,000 to learn what kind of bats are here and where they roost. Land managers then will be able to predict if proposed future development - a large coal mine and a new wave of oil and gas wells - will have a harmful effect on the nocturnal critters that in this area include five sensitive species and that play an important role in ecosystems: A colony of 1,000 bats can eat 22 pounds of bugs in a single night.

Development can be harder on bats than other animals. Because they congregate closely in colonies of hundreds to millions, disturbing one roost can devastate a large population.

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