Do you have bats on or near your property? If so, the Mersey Tobiatic Research Institute wants to hear from you.
It’s been five years since the Mersey Tobiatic Research Institute launched their Bat Reporting website and in that time, they’ve received more than 3,000 reports from Nova Scotians.
And now, Institute spokesperson, Lori Phinney, says a new project will see that data used to locate and monitor bat species using a technology called Acoustic Monitoring to detect bat activity in previously reported locations.
“We get brown bats here, we get northern long-eared bats ad we get tri-coloured bats and we also have these species that come here just during the summer,” says Phinney. “Different bats actually make different sounds so through these (acoustic) monitors we can figure out what kind of bats are in the area.”
Since a major portion of the province’s bat species were wiped by a fungus called White Nose Syndrome, which hit in 2011, researchers have once again opened up their bat monitoring website to track and locate bats across the province.
If you do see a bat or bats in your area, you are urged to report the sighting to the Mersey Tobiatic Research Institute online at www.batconservation.ca
Story by Craig Power
@CraigTPower
power.craig@radioabl.ca
