Colorado Parks and Wildlife Celebrates National Bat Week [VIDEO]

This is National Bat Week! (October 26-November 1) It's a campaign to inspire Americans to help protect bats. Did you know Colorado is home to 18 species of bats, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife wants to help preserve all of those species.

CPW is monitoring bat hibernation sites this winter for the effects of White-nose Syndrome, which is caused by a fungus known as Pseudogymnoascus destructans.  It is responsible for large scale bat die-offs in the Eastern United States, in some cases killing 100% of the bats in a site. It gets its name from the white powder seen on the nose, ears, and wings of infected bats.

So far, the disease has not been found in Colorado, however since first documented in a New York cave in 2007, WNS has spread to 25 states and 5 Canadian provinces. Here is a video from Colorado Parks and Wildlife on why it is so important!

Brazilian Free-Tailed Bats from Colorado Parks & Wildlife on Vimeo.

WHY ARE BATS SO IMPORTANT?

All the bat species found in Colorado are insect eaters, in some cases eating thousands of insects a night. This diet of night flying insects makes bats important for the control of agricultural and human pests. Bats are also important to the cave environments they roost in, bringing energy into these mostly closed systems in the form of their guano.