This goal of this agreement is to complete internal wildlife surveys in abandoned mine openings in moja

This $130,000.00 Cooperative Agreement award from the National Park Service's Cooperative Research and Training Programs - Resources of the National Park System (CFDA 15.945) supports Bat Conservation International, Inc. (BCI) in conducting internal wildlife surveys at abandoned mine openings in the Mojave National Preserve (MOJA) in California.

The goal of this project is to complete surveys to identify the presence of wildlife, particularly Townsend's big-eared bat and desert tortoise, within abandoned mine features both with and without prior remediation efforts. BCI will utilize a range of methodologies including mapping, LiDAR scans, identifying wildlife sign, measuring environmental conditions, and collecting biological samples. The data gathered will inform MOJA on wildlife use of the mine features and assist in guiding future remediation efforts to protect both wildlife and human safety. This project serves the important public purposes of surveying wildlife in abandoned mines and monitoring the effectiveness of remediation measures for key species of concern.

The recipient will complete internal wildlife surveys at mines both with and without remediations. The data from this project will inform moja on wildlife use of mines. The recipient will complete internal surveys of abandoned mine features without remediations, including, but not limited to, allie, bessie, cedar haven, gold bronze, ivanpah, lucky find, silver hill, snowstorm, standard, stonewall, suzanna r, and tungsten springs. Recipient will conduct, as safety permits, internal surveys of the mine features to identify the presence of wildlife. Methodology to complete this goal include mapping underground (hand drawn maps are a rough sketch not to scale with limited detail), lidar scans can be taken at a limited subset of features of interest, workings identifying wildlife sign and taking rock temperature and relative humidity readings, photographs, guano collection for species analysis, white-nose surveillance, and other observations. This project serves two important public purposes: (1) the project will survey selected abandoned mine openings for wildlife. This information will be used to assist in a remediation type selection (if any) for the mine. The overarching goals in mine remediation are to both protect wildlife from human intrusion and to protect the safety of humans that recreationally visit the mines. (2) the project will monitor the use of remediated abandoned mines by townsend s big-eared BAT (corynorhinus townsendii), a state of california species of special concern, and other mine roosting bats, as well as desert tortoise (gopherus agassizii), which is federally listed as threatened under the endangered species act.