SAN DIEGO — Technology is allowing people to get closer to the often-misunderstood bat species here in California.
Eyes to the sky, a group of people are watching for bats as they emerge for their evening flight at Peutz Creek Preserve.
Dan Taylor is a bat biologist who works at Bat Conservation International and is helping to lead a bat walk with the San Diego River Park Foundation. They’re using bat detectors that pick up the high frequency calls of bats and identifies the species.
“Everybody goes bird watching, and it’s a lot easier because you can see birds in the daytime with a pair of binoculars,” Taylor said. “But now, with these detectors having been made so that you can carry them, they’re small and they’re somewhat affordable, now you can go out and you can watch the bats fly and figure out which ones they are.”
The goal is to help communities connect with the often-misunderstood animals. Bat Conservation International estimates that insect-eating bats save U.S. farmers roughly $23 billion each year by reducing crop damage and limiting the need for pesticides.
Taylor is a lifelong fan and has made a career out of studying and protecting bats.
“I’ve liked them since I was five or six years old. I think it’s because they’re the only true flying mammals, so they’re kind of mysterious that way,” he said.
Kristopher Gonzalez is the field coordinator of research and restoration at the San Diego River Park Foundation. Since most bat echolocation occurs beyond the range of human hearing, they use a device called the Anabat to help identify and survey bats by detecting and analyzing their echolocation calls.
“We have a couple rare and endangered bat species. So if we find any rare and endangered bat species like our Pallid bat and those types of bat species, we will then be able to then protect at a higher threshold,” Gonzalez said. “We are constantly trying to acquire more land to protect these areas.”
Gonzalez says bats provide critical pollination for many plants and are essential to the health of global ecosystems, which makes protecting bats a huge priority.
“If we look around us, we have these large Sycamore trees, this beautiful riparian habitat; that’s kind of our mission at the San Diego River Park Foundation, is to protect these sort of habitats for these species,” he said.
Taylor hopes to pass on a piece of their collective passion to anyone who comes on a bat walk.
“Bats aren’t scary. They’re smart,” he said. “Just really important to our environment.”
An easy way to help the bats in your area is to turn off unnecessary lights since light pollution can disrupt or deter bats.