Wildlife Activities
Research and Monitoring - Bat Roosting Outflight Surveys
Bat Roosting Outflight Surveys
Mine and cave roost outflight surveys are conducted at known colonies of California leaf-nosed bats and Townsend’s big-eared bats. These types of surveys allow researchers to detect changes to colony size at each roost. Surveyors sit outside a known roost (usually a mine) with night vision equipment and count all the bats that exit the roost at dusk. Doing these counts on an annual basis determines population trends. Both of these species are known to echolocate at a softer level than most other bats which may cause them to be underrepresented using only acoustic methods.
For additional information on this project, please refer to Work Task D9: System Monitoring and Research of Covered Bat Species (PDF). Find Technical Reports for this Work Task here.
Updated October 14, 2011