By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER Ohio Correspondent COLUMBUS, Ohio — During summer months, at dusk, Mark and Pat Schibi and their neighbors gather in the backyard to watch the bats come out of the bat house mounted on the side of the family home. The watchers have counted as many as 28 as they take flight. They enjoy the bats. A Hanover Township farmer has bats in his barn. He doesn’t enjoy them; he’s worried about rabies and he’s concerned about him or his family getting sick when they clean up the bat droppings, or guano. But bats are important predators for nighttime insects, including some of the crop pests in Ohio and other states. They help farmers save money on pesticides and are otherwise significant agriculturally, said Sarah Stankavich, wildlife survey technician with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Division of Wildlife. According to a 2006 study cited by Stankavich, bats saved Texas cotton growers $74 an acre in pesticide use. Globally, the tally might reach $53 billion a year, according to estimates from the University of Pretoria, U.S. Geological Survey, University of Tennessee and Boston University. A study by Southern Illinois University-Carbondale graduate student Josiah Maines and his advisor, Justin Boyles, estimated that globally, bats save corn farmers more than $1 billion annually – bats like to eat earworm moths. They also pollinate many valuable plants. Still, that Hanover Township farmer is right to be concerned, Stankavich said. Bat guano can cause an infection called histoplasmosis. Chicken and bird droppings also carry histoplasmosis. Most people with this infection never develop symptoms and aren't aware they're infected. It can be serious, though, for those with compromised immune systems. When the farmer decides to clean up the bat droppings, he should wet it first and wear a respirator. That guano, however, when mined responsibly, is valuable as a rich natural fertilizer, states Bat Conservation International (BCI). Guano is a major natural resource worldwide, and can provide significant dollars for landowners and local communities. Also, rabies is uncommon in bats, Stankavich said. Less than half of 1 percent of wild-caught bats have rabies. Still, everyone doesn’t want to live with bats. Animal removal companies will remove bats from your property, since killing a bat in Ohio is illegal. Bats are cool for many reasons, Stankavich said. There are more than 1,300 species worldwide, and Ohio has 11 of those species. One of them, the Indiana bat, was federally endangered before white-nose syndrome (WNS) struck. That wildlife disease that has killed more than 10 million bats in the United States since it was found in New York in 2006. Since WNS, all Ohio species of bats are all considered state species of concern. Are you interested in bats? The DNR has a couple Citizen Scientist projects going. One is acoustic monitoring, which involves researchers driving a route several times during the summer with an acoustic monitor mounted on the car. This records the echolocation calls of the bats. Echolocation is the method used by many animals of finding objects by determining the time for an echo to return and the direction from which it returns, as by radar or sonar. That data help researchers learn more about the critters. The other project is roost monitoring, which means doing what the Schibi family does – counting how many bats come out of a roost. For information on volunteering for these projects, email sarah.stankavich@dnr.state.oh.us Bat Week is Oct. 24-31. For information on bat houses or conservation, visit BCI at www.batcon.org |
