Great Halloween discovery: colony of nearly extinct big-eared bats!

A San Juan bat researcher and his students got the surpise of their lives on a recent field trip to search for and document local bat species in the San Juan Islands.

Russel Barsh, wearing night goggles, led his team into one of many old barns in San Juan County on San Juan Island, where they discovered a whole colony of Townsend Big-Eared bats dangling from the dusty ceiling.

Barsh was shocked, because there had been not a single documented sighting of the species in the area since 1940.

"We were stunned, this is not what were expecting to see, we were absolutely thrilled," he said.

Townsend's Big-Eared Bat is a medium-sized bat with extremely long, flexible ears, which is how they got their name. They mate in the fall, and hybernate in the winter, with an average life span of 16 years.

According to King 5 news, the discovery of the bats strengthened Russel Barsh's belief that the old barns of San Juan County had become sanctuaries for a creature in decline. Many similar barns dot the Island countryside and without help, many will soon collapse into dust.

Barsh decided he would try to protect them. So, he formed an unusual alliance with Boyd Pratt, a local architect and part of a group currently on the mission to preserve old barns.

Barns, bats, and two guys with a very different focus.

“This is definitely an interesting symbiosis here. Talk about diversity of species," Pratt said.

Good news for one species of bat during a time when millions of bats, mostly in the Northeast, have succumbed to a mysterious virus in the past two years known as White-Nose Syndrome.

White-nose syndrome (named for the white characteristics the fungus leaves on the nose and ears), first showed up in the winter of 2006 in Northeast bat caves and it has been compared to a colony collapse disorder, similar to the sudden disappearance of honey bees. The white-nose syndrome has all the same characteristics, because very little is known about the cause.

Biologist Craig Stiher, from the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, found a cave in West Virginia populated with uninfected bats—for now.

“All reason tells me that it’s just a matter of time,” Stihler said. “It’s a real mystery. Nobody knows where it came from. This fungus just appeared. It’s unprecedented. Nobody’s ever seen a die-out in bats like this before.”

The disease has been found in over 25 caves and mines in the northeastern United States ranging from New York, to Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Scientists have little doubt that the malady will continue spreading across the country if drastic measures are not put in place by the USFW to stop it.

So what good are bats anyway and why should we care about them?

First of all, bats have a bad reputation and are seen by most people as ugly, scary, rabies-carrying pests. But the truth is, bats are incredibly important for the Earth’s ecosystem. Most species of bats eat volumous amounts of insects. A single mouse-eared bat can eat as much as 600 mosquitoes in one hour!

In Texas, one huge colony of Mexican free-tailed bats reportedly can eat a quarter million pounds of insects each night. That many insects weigh as much as 125 cars!

Many of the crop-pest insects that bats eat can cause enormous agricultural damage. Bats eat corn borer moths, cucumber beetles, and other adult insects. If bats didn't eat the adults, there would be more young born to infest the farmer’s crops.

Nector drinking bats are important pollinators and fruit eating bats disperse seeds across their habitat at night in their droppings.

Thankfully, the San Juan Islands are a great distance away from the Northern caves where millions of bats have died from the White-Nose Syndrom. For the time being, the rare Townsend Big-Eared Bat has two crusaders-- Russel Barsh and Boyd Pratt, working on their side, because endangered species need all the help they can get from from man kind.

Even spooky little bats.

***Copyright DelilahStarling 2009.