Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Alabama
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Bats are the second most diverse group of mammals in the world, after only rodents, and are vital to the health of ecosystems. Unfortunately, they are declining at an alarming rate and large-scale monitoring is needed to track population trends and intervene as necessary to conserve these species. While the importance of tricolored and other bats species is evident in the Southeast, Fort Moore currently lacks an understanding of their status on the installation. We are working in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense to gather data on the presence and relative abundance of bat communities utilizing this base. Our findings will help Fort Moore prepare their programmatic biological opinion and inform resource managers on how and where to best manage tricolored and other bats within installation boundaries.