Montana Bat Working Group Meeting, February 23, 2016

12 people that indicated they were not members of the Montana Bat Working Group email list serve were added to the list serve – Way to go Bryce!

Andrea Litt – advertising for graduate student for masters project on impacts of forest disturbance on bats. Focus on bug-killed forests? Looking for additional partners for funding and in-kind contributions.

Brandy Scone/Heather Harris/Mike McGrath – will be doing surveys for northern myotis surveys to get block clearance in the counties within the range in Montana. Special permits are needed for capture/handling of bats in those counties.

Kim Linnell – wind farm surveys at Northwestern Energy wind farm east of Great Falls in Judith Basin County. They will be doing mortality studies on birds and bats. They have found hoary bats and silver-haired bats so far.

Lauri Hananuska-Brown – Rocky Mountain Grotto meeting coming up in April at Lewis & Clark Caverns. They have contributed a lot of new bat roost site observations. They are installing cave registers to help monitor cave use.

There is a researcher looking for little brown bat wing punches from Montana. She has a permit, but may be looking for cooperators. She especially wants to target bats coming out of hibernation.

Lisa Bate – Glacier National Park continues bat inventories in additional grid cells. They have 2 new detectors. A student did building surveys, documenting bats in many of their buildings. She has a poster presentation here at TWS.

Matt Comer – BLM – They have a new resource plan revision coming out. It does address bats. Review it if you are interested.

Debbie Leick – MPG Ranch – they have 3 years of data from several detectors. Nate Schwab is working up the data. They did verify Yuma myotis on the ranch. They will be scaling back to 1 detector, and would be willing to move it to their property in eastern Montana near Angela.

Rick Yates – Flathead NF – Maintaining bat monitoring stations. They also put up some bat houses.

Beverly Skinner – Lost Trail NWR – they have a major construction project, relocating the road out of the riparian zone. They want to run bat monitors in conjunction with the road project, hoping to run them for 5 years.

Mike McGrath – provided additional information on the 4-D rule for northern myotis. The rule allows take under some circumstances. There is an accelerated consultation process for incidental take. No take allowed in the WNS zone, so things will change for Montana if WNS gets here.

Development restrictions within 150 feet of known maternity roosts and within .25 miles of hibernacula. R6 of the USFWS (includes Montana) has a permitting process in place for invasive sampling (capture, handling, entering hibernacula). No permit needed for non-invasive sampling such as collecting scat/acoustics. The occupied range includes the 9 eastern-most counties in Montana.

Amie Shovlain – USFS – They have new signs to put up at cave entrances, both general signs and cave-specific signs. One style for outside the entrance, another goes just inside the cave.

Bryce Maxell – Trying to increase genetic sampling of bat droppings. Has tubes with desiccant available to anyone who wants them.

Shannon Hilty – MNHP – gave an update on the statewide acoustic monitoring. General info – bats more active than the expected range of background conditions when temps are warmer (year-round) and when wind speeds are 1-3 meters/second.

Bats are more active than expected at random on darker nights (periods when moon is below the horizon or when the moon is less than half full). More activity over standing larger standing water bodies than moving water. Highest activity levels run from late April through late September. Large standing water bodies are defined as those greater than several acres in size.

More bat activity in rugged landscapes (rock outcrops, cliffs, canyons) than non-rugged landscapes. Non-rugged landscapes had more bat passes in areas near trees than areas lacking trees.

Shannon presented some management considerations in her presentation:

ftp://nris.mt.gov/public/Maxell/Bat_Presentations_Materials/

Overview of Roosting Habitat, Home Range, and Foraging Distance Documented for Montana Bats

http://mtnhp.org/reports/ZOO_BatRoost_HomeRange_2015.pdf

Montana Bat and White-Nose Syndrome Surveillance Plan and Protocols

http://mtnhp.org/reports/ZOO_WNS_Plan_and_Protocols_20151030.pdf

Acoustic Assessment of Bats near the Landusky Wind Turbine Site in the Little Rocky Mountains of North Central Montana and Management Recommendations for Bats

http://mtnhp.org/reports/ZOO_Landusky_BatAcoustic_2015.pdf

Long-term Acoustic Assessment of Bats on Big Sheep Creek in the Tendoy Mountains of Southwest Montana and Management Recommendations for Bats

http://mtnhp.org/reports/ZOO_BigSheepCreek_BatAcoustic_2016.pdf
Web Links to Presentations

See top 8-10 presentations at:

http://mtnhp.org/animal/presentations/presentations.asp
Braden Burkholder gave a quick update on the Excel spreadsheet that has the statewide bat monitoring station data summaries in it. MTNHP has posted this excel spreadsheet at the FTP site listed above so that everyone can access it.

The SM2 (original version) will only take the older, not very weatherproof mic. Better mics are available for the SM2+ and SM3 detectors. That will complicate comparability between sites with different detectors & mics.

Sonobat 3.0 has been used for analysis. Sonobat 4.0 will (hopefully) be available in the near future. It will be much better for species ID and much faster.

MNHP also downloaded weather station data for Montana, which has an enormous amount of data. The weather stations do not always correspond well with where the bat detectors are.

Bryce led a short discussion to get us thinking about the next steps, and how best to utilize these bat detectors as they come offline and are no longer needed in the statewide effort. Some ideas discussed include:

1. 
   Acoustic study on forests impacted by large-scale disturbances such as bug-killed forest vs. burned forest vs. harvested forest vs. intact forest. This study could be combined, at least in part, with an MSU Master’s Thesis project using radio telemetry to look at roost use in these forest types.
   
2. 
   Deploy them to help with obtaining Northern Myotis (Myotis septentrionalis) block clearance (if we can demonstrate we don’t have any, we can get off the hook for some of the restrictions for working in their range).
   
3. 
   Obtain information on bat use of alpine habitats. This information is lacking right now.
   
4. 
   Examine activity levels in various under sampled terrestrial habitats by placing acoustic survey transects perpendicular to riparian habitats. Detectors in the riparian habitat would act as the local control to relativize bat activity.
   
5. 
   Use them for specific focal studies.
   

Genetic samples:

Bryce is encouraging us to get more genetic samples, especially guano samples from roost sites. He can provide vials with desiccant for anyone who would like some. Costs are roughly $20 for a recent wing punch or fresh dropping, $40 for droppings from a roost site where they are likely not very fresh, and $50 for ID of a museum specimen. Wing punches did not work for museum specimens, but part of a foot did work. This should also work for any mummified bats found in roost sites.

Cori Lausen has been getting DNA from nose swabs, using a lab in Canada.

For fresh droppings, hold a captured bat in a holding bag long enough for it to defecate—usually not very long.

For structures such as caves or buildings that have several different roosting areas, get single pellets from each roost area (guano pile) for samples.

Try getting single pellets from what appear to be the freshest droppings.

For wing punches, especially target YULU bats (not sure if M. lucifugus or yumanensis) that have a forearm less than 36.5 mm.

Mist net training—who is interested in having it? Idaho has lost most of its bat biologists due to people moving/retiring, so they are interested in getting new people in training. Amie Shovlain will look into sites that could host the training.

Master’s thesis study at MSU – Andrea Litt—this will include roost selection (via radio tracking) and foraging (via acoustic sampling). She just advertised the study, looking to select a student.

Nate Schwab gave an update on the timber company study. This has been primarily funded by Plum Creek Timber Company with additional support from NCASI, Stoltze, and Stimson lumber companies. Documenting bat diversity and use in managed landscapes using year-round acoustic monitoring. The study area is in NW Montana along the Thompson River, Hubbart Reservoir, Bull Lake, and Marion.

They use Sonobat and Kaleidoscope for analysis, then look to see which bat passes both programs agree on, backed up by hand-checking for species ID.

A few findings: small spike in bat activity during September, which may be related to migration, but no one is sure.

Bats are more active during warmer temperatures year-round, but especially in fall and winter.

The last hoary bat detected was December 4.

The coldest temperature when a bat was detected was 1 degree F (-18 degrees C) on 11/5, when a hoary bat was detected.

They have picked up silver-haired bats throughout the winter. Other winter species include California myotis, western small-footed myotis.

Radio-tracked bats captured as late in the fall as they can catch some (early October?). Bats used both snags and rock outcrops. There seems to be a trend with bats using more snags earlier in the fall, then transitioning to rock outcrops as temperatures get colder. Not a lot of data yet, but the trend looks strong.

They put temperature data loggers in the roost sites as close to where they found the bats as possible (in many cases they could look in the cracks and see the bat). Trees buffered the ambient temperatures a bit, but rock outcrops provided even more of a buffer than trees, with much more stable temperatures than the outside. This was in rock cracks only 3 to 6 inches deep.

The rock outcrops provided temperatures below the optimum temperature for WNS growth, but still within the growth range.

The WBWG is proposing to charge $20 annually for membership ($10 for students). This proposal is up for a vote, with each state getting one vote. We have decided to vote NO for Montana.

Note that the Montana Bat Working Group will always be free and open to all. The Western Bat Working Group would also be open to all, but only paying members would get to vote. They would also get a discount on WBWG meeting registration.

Also note that the WBWG is officially a nonprofit. They went through the paperwork to get and maintain nonprofit status, to help enable fund raising so they can provide grants to students and researchers.

Some comments and concerns expressed by Montana Bat Working Group members were:

Deterrent to join (Montana does not have very many WBWG members as it is).

A lot of money for students. What benefit would a student get from membership? What would a student’s role be in a working group that is heavily geared towards impacting agency management activities?

Members would get a discount for attending WBWG meetings. In most cases, their agency is paying their way. Why not ask more agencies to pitch in money to help sponsor the meetings, rather than making all members pay (even though not all members get to attend the meetings).