Backcountry campers in Fundy National Park have been asked to help monitor bat populations in the park.
They are asked to record the sounds of bats while camping deep in the Fundy Forest.
Park officials will then use the records to help identify bat species based on the sounds they make, said Becky Graham, a park ecologist.
The program will help determine what species are present in the park – and exactly when and where they are there. This will help park officials protect their habitat, including their wintering caves and maternity sites, where they give birth and raise their young.
Although the information is useful for the park, Graham said there is a bonus for campers who collect it. An app on their device will alert them when a species flies over them – and will identify it.
“So you can sit there and know that a big brown bat is potentially just flying over you because it’s going to show you that, but you’ll never hear it yourself,” Graham said.
Researchers are using Echo Meter Touch 2 recordings to help identify bat species by the shapes and formations of sounds seen when reading a sonogram. (Parks Canada)
To participate, campers must be already registered to stay in the park. They must also have a suitable smartphone or tablet. Then, when they arrive at the park, they receive their equipment, including a small recording device.
Graham said campers were asked to turn on the program just before dusk and run it for a while in the dark when the bats are most active.
The ultrasonic microphone is activated by the calls of the bats and records them as they fly over them.
Graham said campers could simply continue their camping activities and leave the program running in the background – not even interfering with the use of the device. Nor does it record human voices, as the recording is activated at different frequencies.
The information is then downloaded when the campers leave the park and return the equipment.
Researchers will look at the spectrograms of audio files – they don’t actually listen to the recording at all. By looking at the bat’s call frequency, inclination, and pattern, they can identify the particular species.
Populations of many species of bats are severely affected by white nose syndrome, which is fatal to most bats exposed to it. (Ryan von Linden / New York Department of the Environment / AP)
Graham said they piloted the program last year, and researchers believe they have selected all seven species that are native to New Brunswick, including three that are on Canada’s endangered species: the little brown bat, the tricolor bat and northern myotis.
Graham said preliminary results are encouraging given the state of the bats in the province. Most species have been wiped out by white nose syndrome, a fungus that grows around the mouth and wings of bats, which was identified in New Brunswick back in 2011.
The disease is caused by a fungus traced to a cave near Albany, New York. It can wake bats during hibernation, speeding up metabolism and causing starvation of animals.
Donald McAlpine, head of the natural sciences and zoology department at the New Brunswick Museum, said bat populations were still in trouble in New Brunswick and elsewhere.
McAlpine and a colleague, Karen Vanderwolf, went out every year to monitor overwintering populations – until 2015, when populations were so low, it was not worth the effort, he said.
Donald McAlpine, head of the natural sciences and zoology department at the New Brunswick Museum in St. John’s, says bat populations are “still in big trouble.” (Joseph Tony / CBC)
About 99 percent of bats have been killed by white nose syndrome.
McAlpine and Vanderwolf returned to wintering grounds last month to inspect the bat caves, but saw no tricolor bats.
News of other species was “mixed,” he said.
“It’s good in the sense that there are still bats. And we’ve seen bats. But there are no signs of recovery at this stage.”
He said there were still only “particles” of bats that were there before White Nose Syndrome.
Small brown bats, the most common bat in New Brunswick, “seem to be keeping to themselves,” McAlpine said.
The tricolor bat, which is physically the smallest of all bats in the province, has not been in wintering caves in New Brunswick since 2013, but records of them have been collected in Fundy National Park, researchers say. (Submitted by Donald McAlpine)
“And everything that is there now has been exposed to a white nose and so obviously there is some immunity. But at this stage there is no real significant recovery.”
McAlpine said they saw no signs last month of the northern long-eared bat or northern miotis, which is also on the endangered list. He said there were observations until 2015, but modeling suggests the species may be extinct.
Although Fundy’s study acoustically identified the long-eared and tricolor bat, McAlpine found no sign of either during a search for wintering caves last month.
Researchers have confirmed records of seven species of bats in the park since 2020, including the little brown bat, pictured here. (Peter Thomson / Associated Press)
He hopes the results mean there are bats of both species in the province, but said identifying the species by the sounds they make is a difficult task, especially since some species sound very similar.
McAlpine said acoustic identification of certain bat species also did not provide information on the size or health of the population.
But once scientists find out where the bats are, they can take steps to help conserve the habitat, including their wintering grounds and their maternity sites.
McAlpine said it’s important for people not to disturb bats during hibernation and when raising their young, so if Fundy employees know where the sites are, they can take steps to protect them, he said.
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