When Jim Kennedy first rappelled down into Kentucky’s Saltpeter Pit three years ago, he landed on “one of the biggest mounds of nastiness that I have ever sunk foot in, and I’ve waded through waist-deep pools of bat guano.” BCI’s veteran Cave Specialist and his colleagues were standing atop a rotting mountain of trash dumped over decades by Pulaski County residents. Then, after scrambling over and around “Mount Trashmore” and venturing into the cave itself, they made a remarkable discovery: an estimated 600 Rafinesque’s big-eared bats were hibernating in a passageway that branched out from the pit ...more

Oregon state officials are taking innovative steps to avoid evicting colonies of Townsend’s big-eared bats that have been roosting in a pair of aging Interstate 5 bridges that have just been replaced near Eugene. As built, the new bridges just won’t accommodate the bats, the Eugene Register Guard reports, so special “bat boxes” are being added ...more

When Timothy Clancy read a newspaper article about how White-nose Syndrome was killing countless bats, he decided that “bats need my help.” So he went to work building bat houses and designing a bumper sticker to raise money for BCI’s WNS Emergency Response Fund. Pretty impressive, right? Now consider that Tim is 12 years old ...more