The North American Bat Monitoring Program Summit
The USGS-FORT staff with the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) held a hybrid summit from May 7 - 9, 2024 at the Fort Collins Science Center in Fort Collins, Colorado. This event brought together partners from across the NABat network with engagement from 31 states, provinces, and tribes. A total of 213 participants from 60+ organizations attended virtually, and 53 participants from a dozen agencies and organizations convened in person in Fort Collins. Over the course of the three-day summit, participants took time to reflect on the road that brought this collaborative program to where it stands today, celebrated successes, and shared forward-looking priorities. Priority tasks the NABat Central Coordinating Office and USGS identified alongside those that various partners are taking on in their respective roles represent wonderfully diverse efforts that will support shared success. Hybrid trainings on the NABat Partner Portal and NABat R Package were also held at the summit. USGS-FORT staff with NABat will continue to engage with partners on growth and improvements to the NABat Partner Portal, data pipelines, supporting decision processes, status and trends, machine learning smart detector development, and more.
National Defense Center for Energy and Environment (NDCEE) Success Story: Improved Efficiency of Artificial Roosts as a Management and Mitigation Tool for Threatened and Endangered Bats
Artificial roosts are widely used on Department of Defense (DoD) properties to aid bat populations (e.g., by providing habitat) or to relocate animals away from areas of conflict (e.g.,buildings). However, this increasingly popular conservation tool can unintentionally pose a risk to bat safety if ill designed or poorly placed, presenting a challenge for military natural resource managers tasked with managing federally protected species. This project produced much needed guidance to aid military natural resource managers in implementing artificial roost technology and help navigate the abundance of largely untested options in the marketplace. Data-driven recommendations for specific roost designs deemed most suitable for housing bats were provided, enabling the DoD to invest in artificial roosts proven to be safe and effective for imperiled species, thereby minimizing the likelihood of adverse outcomes.
Link to the Success Story here.
WCS Canada Bats in Buildings Training Program
WCS Canada Developed a Training Program for managing bats in buildings and are seeking feedback. This course was designed to give professionals and the public the information they need to understand how bats use buildings in Canada and to introduce basic concepts of bat-friendly management. Several updates will be made over the next year or two to add and enhance content. Feedback about any content is welcomed and appreciated.
Right now this course is free and available here: https://training.canadabats.org/
New Five-Year Offshore Wind Leasing Schedule
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced a new five-year offshore wind leasing schedule, which included up to 12 potential offshore wind energy lease sales through 2028. Future offshore wind energy lease sales from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) are anticipated in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific, and the waters offshore of the U.S. territories in the next five years. The leasing schedule included four potential offshore lease sales in 2024, one each in 2025 and 2026, two in 2027, and four in 2028.
Streamlining and Modernizing Offshore Renewable Energy Development
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) have finalized updated regulations for renewable energy development on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
Interior Department Proposes Offshore Wind Sales in Oregon, Gulf of Maine
The Department of the Interior announced two proposals for offshore wind energy auctions off the coast of Oregon and in the Gulf of Maine. The two sales proposed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have the potential to generate more than 18 gigawatts of offshore wind energy, enough to power more than six million homes.
RWSC Offshore Wind & Wildlife Research Coordination Request
The Regional Wildlife Science Collaborative for Offshore Wind (RWSC), a non-profit organization cooperatively established by federal agencies, state agencies, environmental NGOs, and the offshore wind industry seeks to coordinate on offshore wind and wildlife research. They are specifically reaching out to see if anyone has information in regard to these focal areas:
1. Are you planning to conduct research on bats in coastal, island, or offshore areas along the U.S. Atlantic Coast in 2024 or 2025? RWSC is working to maintain a database of current and pending bat research which could relate to offshore wind development. This will help inform the current state of knowledge, facilitate coordination, and identify gaps in data collection (such as understudied species or locations). If you are conducting research, we respectfully request that you fill out this brief form (https://database.rwsc.org/submit-your-project) to add your project to the database. Alternatively, if you have a project website to share, we would be happy to submit the form on your behalf.
2. Do you have existing data which could be entered into NABat, but need assistance with data submission? The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is currently identifying funding to help support data submission into the NABat database. If you are unfamiliar with NABat, it is a multi-agency program which facilitates collaborative, standardized monitoring protocols, data collection, and analysis in order to assess population trends and conserve bats at regional and continental scales. If you have data which have not been entered into NABat due to limited staff time or other issues, we want to hear from you. Please fill out this brief form to share your needs with USFWS. The form should take less than 5 minutes to complete. If you have concerns about data confidentiality, keep in mind that NABat allows for the setting of specific data sharing permissions.
3. Are you aware of good locations for bat capture or acoustic surveys along the U.S. Atlantic Coast? Are you interested in collaborating on bat research, or know of organizations/individuals who might be interested in collaborating on this work? Several of RWSC’s research objectives relate to gaining a better understanding of bat ecology in coastal and offshore environments, through a combination of stationary acoustic surveys, mobile acoustic surveys, and automated radiotelemetry. If you have ideas of good locations for conducting research, or know of organizations/individuals we should be collaborating with, we want to hear from you. Please fill out the same brief form noted in #2. The form should take less than 5 minutes to complete.
If you have any questions about these requests, please don’t hesitate to reach out directly to myself, Laura Hancock (lhancock@umass.edu), and Dr. Zara Dowling (zdowling@umass.edu).
More information about RWSC can be found on the RWSC website, including the RWSC Science Plan. Meeting materials and the 2024 workplan for RWSC’s Bird & Bat Subcommittee can be found in the organization’s public SharePoint files.
May's Community of Practice Call: NABat Template Updates
Join us Wednesday, May 29th from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm (MT) for the NABat Community of Practice call on Updates to the NABat Bulk Upload Templates. Significant upgrades are coming to the NABat bulk upload templates. During this month's call we will unveil changes to the bulk upload templates, provide background on the effort, and outline a basic timeframe for when these updated templates will be available for download via the Partner Portal. Tune in to learn more about these changes intended to improve survey metadata definitions, provide clearer guidelines on required fields, and accommodate new data fields and templates.
To join the meeting, click here.
If you want to be added to the distribution list for NABat CoP calls and other communications, click here to sign up.
Conferences
June 2-5, 2024: American Society of Reclamation Sciences Annual Conference, Knoxville, TN, USA
July 16-19, 2024: State of the Science on Offshore Wind Energy, Wildlife, and Fisheries, Long Island, NY, USA
September 8-11, 2024: The Northeastern Transportation and Wildlife Conference, Mystic, CT, USA
September 22-25, 2024: Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Annual Meeting, Madison, WI, USA
Events
October 11-13, 2024: Southwestern Desert Bats Class, Soda Springs, CA, USA
Check out the NABat Events page for a complete list of training webinars, meeting links, and all other upcoming events!
Research Assistant
The School of Biological Sciences is looking for a Research Assistant to be based in Dr. Daniel Becker's group at the University of Oklahoma. The position will involve virology and immunology analyses of wild bat samples, including hematology, RT-PCR, and serum proteomics. The Research Assistant will also manage data, oversee laboratory organization, and collaborate with the PI and group members to contribute to publications and grants.
To learn more about this position, click here.
Research Analyst 4: National Park Service Long-Term Monitoring Data Scientist
The Oregon State University Human and Ecosystem Resilience and Sustainability (HERS) Lab is a research institution co-led by OSU Cascades and the National Park Service (NPS) that delivers expertise in ecological assessment and monitoring, restoration, and native plant materials to support evidence-based conservation for the 21st century. The HERS Lab hosts the Upper Columbia Basin Inventory and Monitoring Network of the National Park Service (UCBN), East Cascades Native Plant Hub (ECNPH), and the Northwestern Bat Hub on the OSU Cascades campus in Bend, OR. The Lab is hiring one Research Analyst 4 for a 12-month 1.0 FTE appointment, with a possibility for extension subject to availability of funds and/or project requirements.
To learn more about this position, click here.
Southern New Mexico Project Manager
Bat Conservation International is seeking a Project Manager that will focus on watershed restoration projects in southwest New Mexico and should live proximal to the Gila National Forest (Silver City, Las Cruces, Albuquerque, Socorro, Alamogordo, El Paso, TX, Duncan AZ, are example locations). This position is remote/work from home and will require frequent travel to field sites and partner meetings. Work may require overnight camping in a wilderness setting to design, build, inspect, or manage watershed restoration projects. Travel will be highly variable and may include up to two weeks per month during the April- October field season. Remote work requires reliable internet access.
To learn more about this position, click here.
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Bat Macroecology
The Stevens Lab in the Department of Natural Resources Management at Texas Tech University is searching for a postdoctoral research scientist to investigate the macroecology of bats. Initially the postdoc will be tasked with creating species distribution models for the bats of North America and these models will be used as the basis to address a number of macroecological questions addressed with univariate and multivariate statistical analyses. There will be ample opportunity for the postdoc to address their own interesting questions within this collaboration. More generally, the responsibilities of the postdoc will be to analyze large spatial and/or temporal datasets and to write manuscripts and proposals. The position will begin 1 August 2024, or earlier if more convenient, and is a 12-month, full time, fixed term position with reappointment contingent on satisfactory performance. Funding for the position is available for two years with additional years obtained through grants.
To learn more about this position, click here.
Featured Resource: North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) Predicted Northern Long-eared Bat Occupancy Probabilities
USGS-FORT staff with the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) completed a data release containing the results from the North American Bat Monitoring Program's (NABat) species distribution model (SDM) for the northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis).
Predictions of northern long-eared bat occupancy probabilities from the species distribution model are available on Sciencebase. Associated data can be found here.
Featured Resource: Summer Roost Site Suitability Analyses of Four North American Bat Species in the Eastern United States
USGS-FORT staff completed a data release containing the spatial raster outputs from analyses of summer roost site habitat for Myotis lucifugus, Myotis septentrionalis, Myotis sodalis, and Perimyotis subflavus. Spatial raster outputs from summer roost site habitat analyses for Myotis lucifugus, Myotis septentrionalis, Myotis sodalis, and Perimyotis subflavus are available on Sciencebase. Associated data can be found here.
Still have questions? Users who need project guidance or assistance are encouraged to book an appointment or reach out to our Technical Monitoring team for consultation.
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