Bat Project

Creatures of the Night

Why It Matters

Bats are often seen as spooky, or even dangerous, but they are actually one of the most beneficial mammals we have in New Jersey!

Though commonly misidentified as “flying mice,” bats are not rodents. They belong to their own Order of mammals called Chiroptera, which is a greek derived word meaning “hand-wing.” This is an appropriate name because besides being the world’s only flying mammals, bats’ wings are actually evolutionarily modified hands! Additionally, with more than 1,400 species known globally, bats are the second-largest order of mammals, second only to Rodentia (the rodents).

New Jersey is home to 9 residential bat species, all of which are insectivorous. They feed on a variety of night-flying insects, including beetles that destroy our crops, gypsy moths that denude our forests, and of course, those pesky mosquitoes and stink bugs!

A little brown can eat up to 3,000 mosquito sized insects a night!

Bats are extremely important and provide vital ecosystem services in the form of pest control, plant pollination, and seed dispersal. Insect-eating bats save the agricultural industry billions of dollars a year on pesticides and insecticides. Their guano (poop) is also an excellent fertilizer for a home garden. In other areas of the world, bats play a major role in pollinating flowers and dispersing seeds for plants such as bananas, avocados, cocoa, mangoes, and agave. You can thank bats for your delicious chocolate and adult tequila beverages! By dropping a wide variety of seeds over open areas, bats help restore rainforests that were cleared from logging, fire, and other disturbances.

Conservation Efforts

Conserve Wildlife Foundation is dedicated to the conservation and preservation of all rare species in the state of New Jersey, including bats. CWF takes part in a number of bat-related projects year-round that range from hands-on wildlife monitoring to working with homeowners on safe bat exclusion practices.

Our work in the field takes place primarily in the summer, starting with the Summer Mist Netting Project. Since the Northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) was listed as federally Threatened in 2015, we have been working to learn more about the under-surveyed species. In partnership with New Jersey Fish & Wildlife, CWF conducts mist-netting surveys through the summer in hopes of finding the now rare bat in order to track them via radio telemetry. By tracking Northern long-eared bats to their roosts and colonies, we can learn more about how they utilize their habitat and where they can be found, which enables us to better conserve the species.

Similarly, we also partner with New Jersey Fish & Wildlife on the Mobile and Stationary Acoustic Projects each summer. By using “bat detectors” to listen in to the ultrasonic echolocation calls of bats, we are able to identify which species made a given call. Stationary Acoustics involves placing these detectors at various locations spread throughout the state. Mobile Acoustics is largely volunteer-driven, with trained citizen scientists helping us in our hunt for bats by driving those same detectors around road transects. This data is submitted to the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) and used to help us determine which species of bats live where in New Jersey.

The Summer Bat Count is another largely volunteer-driven program. Started by CWF and the State Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP), this project relies on New Jersey residents to tell us where the bats are. If someone knows of a place where bats roost in the summertime – like an attic, barn, bat house, church, or tree – they can reach out to us and sign up to report how many bats emerge from the roost through the summer. These data give us a better understanding of how NJ’s bats are distributed, what conditions they choose for roosting, population estimates and changes over time, and reproduction success.

We also focus considerable energy on education and public outreach through Bats In Buildings and our speaker series, Creatures of the Night. Bats are a misrepresented and misunderstood group of animals and much of the fear surrounding them is due to myth and misinformation. We try to dispel this fear through education, lively presentations, and even bat walks! Our Bats In Buildings project also provides resources for homeowners with “house bats” to help them determine their best course of action, like safely excluding the bats. We provide resources on how to build and install a bat house, as well as an up-to-date list of professional bat excluders in the state equipped to safely and legally perform a bat exclusion (New Jersey’s “safe dates” for bat eviction are April 1-30 and August 1-October 15).

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