If you have the space, consider planting trees that will one day serve as a natural home for bats. 鈥淧lant long-lived trees like oaks, which will provide both foraging and roosting habitat,鈥� says Joy O鈥橩eefe, an assistant professor and wildlife extension specialist at the University of Illinois, as well as 鈥渇ast-growing trees like pines and maples, which will provide roosting space under the bark, or in cavities inside dead branches.鈥�

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鈥淚 think it鈥檚 important to stress the value of this type of experimental work with bats, to really try to dig into what their ecosystem services are in a deliberate manner. While we can probably extrapolate out and say bats are important in other types of forest, I wouldn鈥檛 discount the value of doing the same kind of work in other systems, especially if there are questions about certain insect or tree species and how bats affect them. So rather than extrapolating out across the board, let鈥檚 do the work to try to figure out how bats are benefiting plants. And before they鈥檙e gone, hopefully,鈥� O鈥橩eefe concluded.

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鈥淯sually, it鈥檚 just the occasional bat that gets indoors. It鈥檚 kind of a 鈥渨hoops鈥� thing for the bat, like 鈥業 didn鈥檛 mean to go in this place but hey, here I am. Now how do I get out?鈥欌�� O鈥橩eefe said. 鈥淎nd you can help those bats by turning off the lights, opening the doors and windows and bats will usually find their way out.鈥�

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鈥楾his was an in-depth study of these two imperiled species in landscapes where they co-occur. Nobody鈥檚 done that before,鈥� said Joy O鈥橩eefe, assistant professor and wildlife extension specialist at the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at Illinois. 鈥楾his investigation gives us a much better sense of how bats not only coexist, but also how they benefit our forests and how we can thus manage the forest to provide bats with better habitat.鈥�

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