Project title four BAT acoustic and mist netting level of effort determination for regulatory and monitoring guidelines in WNS impacted landscapesproject period 9 13 2022 03 31 2025THE primary purpose…

Project title four BAT acoustic and mist netting level of effort determination for regulatory and monitoring guidelines in WNS impacted landscapesproject period 9 13 2022 03 31 2025THE primary purpose of this award is to fund work examining what the post white nose syndrome WNS environment acoustic sampling and mist netting sampling levels of effort duration and site should be for the endangered indiana BAT myotis sodalis , the threatened northern long eared BAT myotis septentrionalis and the at risk little brown BAT myotis lucifugus and tricolor BAT perimyotis subflavus in the eastern and midwestern portions of the united states following the advent of WNS, research emanating out of the u s geological survey virginia cooperative fish and wildlife research unit showed that current survey efforts were lacking in duration and extent to be able to conclusively show the presence or absence of these species hence, research efforts often returned biased data and more importantly, monitoring to support regulatory clearance may have missed occurrences, i e , false negatives, that could allow stewardship and other management activities to occur without proper minimization and mitigation efforts to conserve the bats because the effects of WNS vary with time since the onset of the disease and because BAT assemblages throughout the united states vary in composition and number, this work must occur broadly to derive nation wide monitoring standards guidelines where an endangered species act nexus occurs, these guidelines are necessary for ongoing and future forest management, mining, military training, highway construction, etc in addition, continued long term, landscape level data collection also can provide insights in how acoustic and traditional mist netting detection efforts differ in data type and quality allowing for potential future calibration whereby levels of effort for acoustic surveys can be equated to comparable mist netting levels of effort this work will result in robust survey standards for these species of bats concomitant with this, this work will also inform ongoing nabat sampling design the other component of this work is to continue efforts to collect known BAT echolocation recordings to species that will be used to periodically test the accuracy of automated BAT identification software for both monitoring and research use the intended direct beneficiaries of this work are the u s fish and wildlife service and multiple other federal state agencies no subrecipient awards are anticipated