A friend pointed me to an interested Request for Proposal – RFP – from New Hampshire Fish and Game. (An RFP is the way a governments says “We want something done; if you want to do it submit a bid and we’ll see whether we want to hire you,”)
“Soliciting proposals from qualified parties to conduct bat acoustic and capture surveys at talus slopes
and rock face habitats throughout New Hampshire. The objective is to investigate whether bats use
talus slopes and rock faces for winter hibernation in New Hampshire and the importance of these nontraditional
hibernacula to Myotis bats. Work includes implementation of an acoustic survey protocol
using acoustic recorders, and where feasible bats will be captured for both identification and potentially
tracking to learn more about their winter habitat use. The project will inform habitat conservation for
priority bat species in New Hampshire.
Because of geology New Hampshire doesn’t have caves in the usual sense – places where water has eaten away at soft rock creating a big opening – so we don’t have many places that certain species of bats use for hibernacula to over-winter. Our “caves” are mostly jumbles of boulders that have spaces between them.
Talus is the loose rock that piles up at the bottom of cliffs over time – the most obvious example in New Hampshire is at the base of Cannon Mountain, easily visible when you drive through Franconia Notch. The question that Fish & Game wants to investigate is whether they provide enough protection for bats be use them as hibernacula. If so, our bat population, devastated by white-nose syndrome, might be healthier than we realized.
If this interest you, you might like this 2016 article about collecting guano with tweezers to see if it could be used to detect the presence of invasive insects. Alas, the research project didn’t pan out.
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