interesting article, The findings suggest that bats are resilient to high-severity fire, and some species may even benefit from the effects of fire on the landscape.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 221141.htm
Moderator: Moderators
wyandottecaver wrote:Red bats tend to hibernate in the leaf litter and a winter or early spring fire is bad news for them.
driggs wrote:wyandottecaver wrote:Red bats tend to hibernate in the leaf litter and a winter or early spring fire is bad news for them.
There was an interesting presentation on prescribed burns at this year's Southeast Bat Diversity Network conference by R. W. Perry of the USDA Forest Service, Hot Springs AR (I can't find a copy online). They placed temperature probes and "bats" made of a known-melting-point wax underneath the leaf litter during winter prescribed burns. 93% of the burns resulted in conditions that they assume would be fatal to Red Bats and Hoary Bats, defined as > 145 degrees for 60 seconds. But a few sites retained temperatures where the roosting bats could have survived, and they recovered the wax "bats" in near perfect condition.
This is certainly not rationale for assuming that prescribed burns don't significantly impact tree bats, but it was cool to see that in some cases, bats who weren't able to escape in time may survive. Apparently it is not uncommon to observe Reds coming out of torpor and flying out of the leaf litter as fire approaches.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users