Hinesburg Land Trust

Lots of Hinesburg community members and regional wildlife buffs have been asking about the Indiana Bat, an engandered species found in South Hinesburg. The bat has become quite a friend and symbol of the HinesburgLand Trust’s efforts in conserving open space in our town — and resulted in a large federal grant to assist in completing our work on the Bissonette - LaPlatte Headwaters conservation project.  Here’s some basic information about our friend, the Indiana Bat…

The Indiana Bat is a federally endangered bat species. Indiana bats are long-lived for their size, living an average of 15 years and weighing about the same as 3 pennies with a body about the size of your thumb. During the colder months in Vermont, from November through April, these bats hibernate in caves and mines, called hibernacula. In spring, they migrate from their hibernacula to their summer range, where they are active at night and roost during the day under the exfoliating bark of dead and dying trees or live shagbark hickories.

During the summer months, female Indiana bats form large maternity colonies in maternity roost trees where they congregate to bear and raise their pups from mid-June to early July.

Each reproductive female Indiana bat gives birth to only one pup each year. The pups are born naked, but grow quickly and begin flight at just 3 weeks of age.

Because female Indiana bats exhibit strong fidelity to roost sites, Indiana bats’ maternity roost trees are very important habitat features worth protecting.  In efforts to find maternity roost trees, biologists put radio transmitters on reproductive Indiana bats and track them for the duration of the transmitters’ battery life, about two weeks.

During the summer of 2008, biologists trapped two reproductive Indiana bats on Lewis Creek Road. These bats were then tracked to a large dead elm next to the road. When biologists revisited this tree at dusk and watched the bats leaving their maternity roost, they counted over 300 Indiana bats!  That makes this maternity roost tree the largest Indiana bat maternity colony ever found by bat biologists in Vermont!

FACTS:

• You will never find anIndiana bat in your house!  From spring through fall, they roost exclusively under the exfoliating bark of dead and dying trees or shagbark hickories. 
• Indiana bats are about the size of your thumb, live to be about of 15 years old.
• Each reproductive female Indiana bat gives birth to only one pup each year.
• Bats help control insects, eating over 1,000 mosquitoes, moths, and other nighttime insects per hour!
• The Indiana bat is one of two federally endangered animals found in Vermont.
• Indiana bat populations have become increasingly vulnerable due to White Nose Syndrome, a mysterious syndrome affecting bats in the northeastern U.S.