The Canadian Flathead, as well as the area immediately below the border, has hosted a number of bat studies in the past few years, including this most recent one…
Bat biologists are converging in B.C.’s Flathead River Valley tomorrow. They hope to gain new information to advance bat conservation in B.C.’s southeast and to ultimately minimize the impacts of White Nose Syndrome, a mysterious disease that has killed millions of North American bats.
The four-day Bat BioBlitz, organized by conservation groups in B.C. and Alberta and led by Wildlife Conservation Society Canada’s bat biologist, Dr. Cori Lausen, will build on an initial inventory of Flathead bats that Lausen conducted last summer during a BioBlitz. That inventory detected two species of bats in the Flathead that are considered federally Endangered by the Committee on Endangered Wildlife in Canada: little brown myotis and northern myotis.
“In the southeast corner of B.C., the Flathead may be the gateway for entry of White Nose Syndrome into B.C., and it is thus urgent to start monitoring bats in this area,” said Lausen. “Significant bat hibernation caves have never been found in B.C. and yet the Flathead is surrounded by karst and has the deepest cave in all of Canada.”