A bat captured to tag by ADF&G. (Courtesy Michael Kohan)
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is calling on Southeast residents to help gather information on local bat populations. Each year, the department asks citizen scientists to conduct driving surveys and gather bat calls.
“As you’re driving along the transect, you’ll hear kind of random static noises and you’ll be waiting like ‘oh I wonder if that was a bat,’ says Fish and Game wildlife biologist. Tory Rhoads.
“But when you hear this clicking sound it is so distinctive,” says Rhoads. “It is like nothing else and you will know immediately ‘oh that was a bat.’ And the silver hair bat calls sound completely different from the myotis calls,” says Rhoads. “They’re this melodic kind of alien sound that’s much slower, it’s more musical. It’s a really, really beautiful call.”
The bat monitoring program operates in seven different communities. Bat research in the state stems back to the discovery of a disease.
“The reason that bat research really revved up, not only in Alaska but across the U.S. was back in 2006 there was the discovery of a disease called white-nose syndrome that we think has been introduced from Europe or Asia and the bats there are used to it,” says Rhoads. “And once it arrived in North America it decimated bat populations.”
Before that, Rhoads says not a lot was known about bats – particularly those in Alaska.
“We didn’t really have a good handle on what population numbers were, what species there were, where they were, what kind of habitats they were associated with,” says Rhoads. “And specifically in regards to the concern from white nose syndrome, where our bats were overwintering or hibernating.”
So, they launched research programs.
“We went out and we tagged a bunch of bats and we were trying to figure out where they were overwintering,” says Rhoads. “And we started a stationary passive monitoring program where we just peppered the entire Southeast with devices that will record bat calls. And then in conjunction with that, in 2014 we started a driving survey program that’s this community-based citizen science effort to collect data.”
In Haines, there are a couple different ways Fish and Game is monitoring bats.
“We have a passive monitor that we’ve gotten data on since I think 2014 up in Klukwan,” says Rhoads. “And in conjunction with that we do these driving surveys. Which is the citizen science program where we have local coordinators.”
The local coordinator in Haines is Zephyr Sincerny.
“We’ll go through an orientation of the bat driving survey kit,” says Sincerny. “Basically you go out, take that kit. You start the route and you’re driving at 20 mph and detecting bat calls as you go. Once you’ve done that, you bring the kit back to the library here and I get that data sent off to Tory with Fish and Game.”
“And from this we’re able to get really meaningful data about the number of bats that are in the area as well as kind of a broader swath of the habitats that they inhabit,” says Rhoads.
That data ties back to concerns about white nose.
“First and foremost we really want to get baseline data on the species that we have and also monitor the species over time,” says Rhoads. “We are concerned about white nose coming to Alaska. It was picked up in Washington state not too long ago, which sent us on kind of a red alert for revamping our efforts and monitoring and detection.”
So why citizen science? Rhoads says it’s a really efficient way to do this kind of research.
“It would be completely logistically impossible for us to go out to all these different communities and conduct driving surveys especially when we kind of want them all in the same time frame,” says Rhoads. “We don’t have the personnel to do it. We don’t have the time available to us.”
And, it helps grow scientific understanding within communities.
“The other really wonderful thing about citizen science based programs is they really enhance the public understanding of science, which I think is an immensely valuable thing in terms of education and outreach,” says Rhoads.
For more information on participating in the monitoring program, visit the Haines Public Library, or adfg.alaska.gov.
