by Leah Wells, Wildlife Biologist
Over the past 3 months, CWF biologists along with U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) New Jersey Field Office staff have been working late into the night to survey for bats in the Pinelands. Each survey begins just before sunset with the setup of large, nearly invisible nets stretched across wooded corridors. As night falls, bats emerge from their day roosts and fly through the sky to their foraging grounds. From sunset until 2 am, the team checks the nets every 10 minutes, carefully extracting any bat captured in the net for identification, weighing, and measurement.
During ten nights of the 2024 mist netting surveys, we captured 64 bats. Most of the bats captured this season were big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) and Eastern red bats (Lasiurus borealis).
Of those sixty-four bats, forty-four were big brown bats, accounting for 68.8% of captures. Big brown bats are the most common species of insectivorous bats in North America. They are relatively large with long, silky fur, dark skin, and a wide nose. Eastern red bats were our second most commonly caught species. Nineteen red bats were caught in our nets, making up 29.7% of captures. They are widespread across Eastern North America and are distinguished by their orange fur and furry tail membrane.
The goal of our mist netting surveys was to capture rare bats in the Myotis genus. On the last survey night of the season, we finally achieved our goal with one Northern-long eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis). Northern long-eared bats are tiny bats, weighing 5-8 grams, with brown fur and, as their name suggests, long ears. On November 29, 2022, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a final rule to reclassify the Northern long-eared bat as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
