The North American Bat Monitoring program (NABat) in British Columbia is a long-term monitoring program led by Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, designed to provide baseline data and assess the status and trends of North American bats. The efforts in BC aim to document relative abundance and diversity of local bat populations with the assistance of volunteer biologists recording bat activity in 10×10 km grid cells located throughout the province. The objectives of the NABat program are to provide:
- The architecture for coordinated bat monitoring to support local, regional and range-wide inferences about trends in bat populations and abundances in response to White-Nose Syndrome, climate, wind energy, and habitat loss; and
- Managers and policy makers with the information they need on bat population trends to effectively manage bat populations, detect early warning signs of population declines, and estimate extinction risk.
NABat in BC is supported by the generous funding contributions of:
- Columbia Basin Trust
- The Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program
- Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation
- TD Friends of the Environment BC
The following organizations have contributed immensely through the donation of in-kind time toward detector deployment and grid cell management:
- Sunshine Coast Wildlife Project
- Lillooet Naturalist Society
- South Coast Bat Conservation Society
- Habitat Acquisition Trust
- Slocan Solutions Society and Slocan Lake Stewardship Society (via Slocan Wetland Assessment and Monitoring Project)
- Nature Conservancy Canada
- Associated Environmental Consultants
- Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area
- Community Bat Program of BC
Acknowledgements
The Wildlife Conservation Society Canada gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program for its contribution to the project “Establishing and monitoring bat abundance and diversity”.
The Wildlife Conservation Society Canada recognizes the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation and anglers, hunters, trappers and guides who contribute to the Trust, for making a significant financial contribution to support the project “Monitoring and Protecting BC’s bat diversity prior to White-Nose Syndrome”. Without such support, this project would not have been possible.