Michael Durham/Minden Pictures, Bat Conservation International
Collaborative science-based conservation
Collaboration among diverse constituents and beyond country boundaries provides the basis for shared data collection and shared initiatives needed to guide decision-making to protect and manage the world’s bat populations. The North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) unites government agencies, researchers, and NGOs to improve the state of conservation science for bats in North America, serving as a powerful role model for collaborative and science-based bat conservation.
Objectives
- INCREASE QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF DATA CONTRIBUTED TO INFORM POPULATION STATUS AND TRENDS OF NORTH AMERICAN BAT SPECIES
- CONTRIBUTE TO REPORTS OF STATUS AND TRENDS OF NORTH AMERICAN BAT SPECIES MADE AVAILABLE TO DECISION MAKERS
- DETERMINE REGULATORY STATUS OF BAT SPECIES BASED ON POPULATION STATUS AND TRENDS
Program Details
Bats in North America face three major threats: White-nose Syndrome (WNS), mortality from wind energy facilities, and habitat loss and degradation. Lack of information on population status and trends impedes regulatory protection and hinders targeting conservation actions for species and populations that need it most. Committing to long-term monitoring that provides accurate population status and trends is the first step in taking conservation action.
We serve as a key partner and leading contributor to the North American Bat Monitoring Program. Our team provides leadership and collaborates on research involving data collection, data processing, and analytic tools to provide robust data inputs and analytic outputs to inform the status and trends of bat populations in North America. We work specifically on improving methods of reproducibility and scalability of monitoring data to support bat conservation efforts in North America and globally.
Michael Durham/Minden Pictures
We’re dedicated to working with partners. Our efforts include:
- Collaborate and improve methods for standardized data collection and dissemination to assess the status and trends of bat populations in North America
- Conduct robust analyses and build tools that enable decision-makers to identify and achieve conservation outcomes
- Provide leadership to unite stakeholders to collaborate as vital partners in an effort to address significant threats to North American bats – including White-nose Syndrome, wind energy development, and habitat loss
We share and leverage data to improve bat conservation across North America
Kendra B. Lewellyn
NABat National Data Processing Lab (NDPL)
The NDPL is a research collaborative focused on developing scalable and reproducible data processing capabilities that aid the core mission of NABat — improving the state of conservation science for bats. NDPL collaboratively unites state and federal agencies, academic partners, and other organizations focused on developing new tools and workflows. It simultaneously addresses the need to process large volumes of acoustic data in efficient, reproducible, and cost-effective ways to support our ability to determine the status and trends of bats in North America.
This fully integrated, data processing center handles all aspects of acoustic data processing for NABat acoustic surveys. Our collaboration among BCI, NABat, and Conservation Metrics Inc. lowers barriers and the cost of participating and contributing data to NABat. Our goal is to increase efficiency and speed of contributions while providing high-quality, standardized methods, and continually advancing the field of processing acoustic data streams for informing conservation.
Interested in collaborating? Contact rapid@batcon.org
To download our information flyer, CLICK HERE.
Key Collaborators
- Conservation Metrics, Inc.
- North American Bat Monitoring Program
- State Agency Biologists
- U.S. Federal Agencies
Photo by Christy Walker
Southwest & PacWest Regional Hubs
The Southwest (Arizona & New Mexico) and PacWest (California & Nevada) Bat Hubs were created by BCI, in partnership with the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) and US Fish and Wildlife Service, to coordinate and grow bat monitoring activities in their respective regions. The Hubs develop and maintain a community of partners who work together to monitor bats by contributing to NABat. The Hubs support their partners by coordinating survey efforts, facilitating the sharing of knowledge and equipment, interfacing with the NABat Coordinating Office to improve the platform, and ensuring that quality data are supplied to NABat in a timely manner. As the Hubs work with their partners to grow contributions to NABat, thereby improving the quality and quantity of available data on bat populations, NABat allows for increasingly powerful insight into the status and trends of bat populations to inform the best conservation science of bats possible.
Interested in getting involved? Contact:
- PacWest Bat Hub Coordinator, Jessie Bunkley: jbunkley@batcon.org
- Southwest Bat Hub Coordinator, Dr. Kathy Gerst: kgerst@batcon.org
A Mexican free-tailed bat in flightCollaboration is essential for effective conservation. We work side-by-side with partners worldwide to secure lasting global conservation success.
Chief Scientist
J. Scott Altenbach