The Easts Spotted OWL!!!!!!!!

[Jay C. White Cloud]

Cedarman...,Creator forbid we ever prove logging is good for the forest...what are you thinking man...have you lost your mind? :D :D :D

How about all the mammalogists I know that are dying for funding to study bat hibernaculum and nesting in artificial boxes that loggers could hang and monitor for them...the list goes on of good and valid research that can't find funding because of it going to large corporate research grants and funding plans for the DOT subcontractors that don't do "diddly" for us.  Logging and conservation not only can go hand in hand, it's been trying to really hard since the mid 70's.  If Big Government-Big Business would get out of the way, and actually let something productive happen!!!!

[Al_Smith]

Now we're talking about a so called Indiana bat that the ding bats think needs some help .Does it really though .I mean they've survived probabley since the beginning of time without it .

Now this "forest lane " business. We're talking the midwest ,farm ground ,20-50 -100 acre patchs of hard woods .Certainly not hundreds of square miles of trees like on the western slopes in the Rockies or the left coast .

Besides that hardwoods are not clear cut in 10-20 acre patchs like on the slopes with Douglas firs ,they are selectively cut .You aren't killing off habitate for the bats by taking down a few trees .A couple of big oaks sawn for fine furniture ,trim etc might screw up a place for the red hawks to land but they do pretty good big oak or not .

The mid west is not high impact logging like perhaps Oregon ,Washington state etc .

[chain]

I'm under the impression that several species of bats suffer from 'White-nose Syndrome', a complex disease of hibernating bats especially in cave colonies but also this disease affects the Indiana bat. According to U.S. Wildlife, millions of bats have been infected and died from 'WNS'.

It is thought that disturbance in cave bat colonies,' man-made and natural causes' have a great influence in promoting the disease.

[beenthere]

It is thought that disturbance in cave bat colonies,' man-made and natural causes' have a great influence in promoting the disease.

And it doesn't take much "thought" for all heck to break loose and easy to put the slam down on the logging industry. Just a bug in their ear that a bat is using a tree, and the surrounding area is protected for life.
Sorry to rant, but it happens when the Gub'ment agencies feel they need to do something (just anything to show they are responding) to earn their keep. The list of examples is a mile long.
Once in effect, such quarantines usually stay in effect. 

[SPIKER]

Interesting about Logging Trails/Paths & Roads as where I worked back in 2002 or so there was a group that came in and strung up some bat netting across the Nat Gas right away that ran thru company owner's woods.   It was summer and you could not run thru the woods without being eaten alive by deer flies & horse flies.   At night 100's of bats loved the area 3 BIG ponds )8 or so acres) with some yard lighting & the woods came alive with bats.   They caught lots of brown bats & Indiana bats & some rather rare ones from what the group said.   Wonder how bad the skeeters and bugs would have been without all them bats    

I road 4 wheeler thru the woods to the back farm to get some supplies out of storage barn and my white tee shirt looked like I had black poke-a-dots.   Wish the Bats ate deer flies & horse flies too lol..

m

[Al_Smith]

Between barn swallows and bats if they didn't exist the bugs would be worse than they are no doubt .

[Cedarman]

All caves on state and federal ground in Indiana are off limits to cavers and everyone else.  Years ago bats were routinely killed in caves by ignorant people that did not understand the value of bats.  By going into bat hibernaculums in winter disturbing the bats causes them to rouse and use energy. If they awake too many times they will not have enough energy to make it until bug eating time.  Cavers being rather environmentally conscious of life underground are interested in bat conservation and promote good research.
If the state can close all caves on the state, it is not too much of a stretch that all caves could be closed all year long to prevent the spread of whitenose. Cavers know that would not do a thing to control its spread.  Bats "kiss each other" and easily spread the disease amongst themselves. 

[Norm]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but a major bridge project near Des Moines, IA has been put on hold because they found an Indiana bat. Guess he must of got lost.

[Axe Handle Hound]

Just another small clarification on this...the Indiana bat is not a subspecies of the Little Brown Bat, it is a separate distinct species.  Little brown bats are Myotis lucifugus and Indiana bats are Myotis sodalis.  Same genus, different species and as everyone already knows and are likely just having some fun with the name, just because they call them Indiana bat doesn't mean that's the only place they occur.  As far as where they roost, it is not just shagbark hickories, but any tree with exfoliating bark like OneWithWood suggested.  I was involved in a study a few years back (I work for industry) where they glued radio transmitters to the back of Indiana bats they caught in a mist net and then tracked them for 2 weeks to see where they traveled and roosted.  Their daytime roost was a giant dead cottonwood with the bark peeling off in sheets.  In regards to White Nose Syndrome, Cedarman is correct that it will definitely spread among bats of the same cave via their own interaction, but what the USFWS is attempting to do by closing caves is limit the amount of interaction between caves.  People traveling between caves will only help serve as vectors for the disease and it's not just Indiana bats that die.  Many bat species are susceptible to white nose and it is definitely putting a hurt on the bat populations everywhere east of the Mississippi.  I'll give you a dire prediction for consideration, right now you're really only dealing with restrictions for Indiana bats, but if white nose continues to spread and decimate the bat populations you're going to see nearly all the Myotis spp. added to the federally threatened/endangered list.     

None of this is meant to tell anyone that they're wrong for being angry.  I would feel the same if the federal government told me I couldn't cut trees on my own land. 

[Cedarman]

Bats need 2 things.  1) a home,  2)  food 
In cold weather, bats stay in caves mines and other places with the correct temperature that different species of bats like.  But there are some species that overwinter in the leaf litter on the forest floor.
In warm weather, bats like under the bark because that hides them and keeps them warm. 
Logging may destroy a few homes and maybe kill a few bats if they happen to be in the tree that is cut down.  A small survey of loggers indicates they rarely see a bat come out of a tree that they cut down.  USFWS has never found a dead bat caused by logging that I know of.  They just assume that bats may be harmed by logging.

On the plus side logging may increase the food supply, the second thing bats must have to survive.

I have heard through the caving rumor mill is that scientists spread the disease in the beginning by going to cave after cave looking for dead bats, just like they spread chicken lung fungus by inspecting chicken houses in PA.  They carried it in their own lungs.

The white nose fungus likes cold and damp.  The disease should do less harm the further south bats are.  Winters are shorter and bats can feed later and earlier in the seasons, thus letting them  combat the disease.  It is hoped that the bats will develop some immunity to the disease just as European bats have.  This is where the disease originated.

[Jay C. White Cloud]

As for this bat, it is nothing more than a sub species of the common myotis (little brown bat.)

This was my comment Axe Handle, and it dates how long I have been out of college.  You are correct that it is it's own distinct species now, but it wasn't.  Subspecies and species taxonomic designation is part of the politics of science I didn't like, nor do today. Often science ego drive research and funding.  It is often arbitrary, even in the face of generics, which is now opening up all types of discussions and reclassifications across the biology field. Like "Grizzly" and "Polar" bears, which are to separate species, but are starting to hybridize as the female Polar Bears are being driven off of shrinking ice pack. My point is still the same lets fund useful research, not political research, and ego driven science.

I have heard through the caving rumor mill is that scientists spread the disease in the beginning by going to cave after cave looking for dead bats, just like they spread chicken lung fungus by inspecting chicken houses in PA.  They carried it in their own lungs.

Cedarman,

I belonged to BCA for many years, while in college and out,  I am also (was) an avid caver.  You are dead on about our conservation ethic, and it could well have been a scientist doing research that spread the "white nose syndrome."  From everything I have read, and followed, it was.  This discussion is about Politics, and more importantly the bad science within and behind politics.  I didn't finish my PhD because of these very issues and continue to "struggle against the machine."

Let's blame loggers, and lets make sure we only fund research that is on our political agenda, not necessarily the research we should do, but the research big business, big government wants.  I can't begin to tell you how often other research is pushed off the table, or underfunded.  It drove me out of college, and into the Marines.  At least the politics in the Marines was in your face and honest, for the most part, not so much today...

If we loose the big picture on bats and bees, we as a species could seal our own fate.  Spending millions if not billions on bad science and political agendas over some species like the Indian Bat, and not Bats in general is foolish and misguided.  We must practice triage when allocating funding research money is to be spent.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out that looking at the big picture is more important than focusing on a detail.  I understand that the Indiana Bat is an indicator species, as is the Polar Bear, but how we approach the research is really poor.

[Al_Smith]

There are no caves in this part of Ohio .The bats roost/hibernate where ever they can find shelter .Often in a portion of a hollow tree .

Perhaps 10-12 years ago I unknowing cut right through a bunch of them hibernating in a hollowed out portion of the largest soft maple I had ever seen in my life time .54" at breast high .Spit those little rascals out into a snow bank .About his time of year and a typical late March snow on the ground .Little rascals woke up and flew away like nothing ever happened to them .

To reiterate on the subject I still don't feel the low impact type of logging down in the midwest will have any effect on them.It certainly didn't decimate the squirrels or raccoons one bit if that accounts for anything . There's more deer now than there was in pioneer times and on and on .

When you see birds of prey in abundance there has to be prey .One sign of a healthy ecosystem and we have hawks and owls galore .