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On Tuesday, KQED radio’s Forum with Michael Krasny was on the topic of bats. The educated and eloquent guests included Patricia Winters, education and rehabilitation director for the California Bat Conservation Fund; Rachel Long, farm advisor on pest management with the Cooperative Extension in Yolo/Solano County; and Don Clark, former research wildlife biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Department. Their claim was simple, predictable, and unfortunate: bat populations are decreasing markedly around the world, due to a combination of misplaced fear, superstition, pesticides and habitat destruction.
The guests went into great detail regarding bats’ harmlessness to humans, their role in managing insect populations, and their roles in pollinating and reseeding. According to Ms. Winters, bats are responsible for pollinating 450 cash crops*. Someone suggested that they were responsible for pollinating cocoa; Winters ruefully remarked that, no, “If bats pollinated chocolate I would have the battle won.”
Particularly troubling were the stories of bats becoming trapped inside houses, especially A-frame homes. Apparently bats will mistakenly enter, fly up to the rafters, and will die of thirst because their terror of the people below prevents them from descending. There does not need to be much space for them. Guess the smallest crack the average bat in California can crawl into (width by length) according to the experts.
OK, have a guess?
The mind-boggling answer is three-eighths of an inch by an inch and a half. They are apparently quite content in this tiny space.
The organization Bat Conservation International was strongly endorsed. The Organization for Bat Conservation also looks promising; their mission to “Teach the World About the Benefits of Bats” involves providing information, offering “Adopt-a-bat” programs, and selling bat supplies such as bat houses and plans thereof.
* The other interesting thing as that I doubt if I could name more than 100 cash crops; this illustrates my cluelessness, the inability to extrapolate globally from U.S. practices, or both.
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