WASHINGTON – It is after Halloween, but the spookiness of bats has nothing to do with their real life of eating insects and pollinating plants across the tropical regions of the world. And at a time when pesticides are being blamed for disrupting pollination, the benefits of bats are at last being recognized.
Manager for the U.S. Forest Service’s Nature Watch program Kimberly Winter says efforts are underway to help with the dwindling bat population.
“The US Forest Service now has an initiative called the Bats in Public Spaces Initiative,” says Winter. “We’re going to distribute bat boxes, which are like those nesting boxes, to our sister agencies, as well as on Forest Service lands, so that we can have an educational component available at any visitor center or public place where people can come and see the box but also learn about bats with an interpretive panel.”
Click here to get started with the Forest Service if you wish to put up bat houses in your area.
To hear more about these oft-overlooked pollinators, click the audio player above.
