Biologists with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) discovered an endangered bat species that had not been captured in the state since 2015.<\/p>\n
Indiana bats have been federally endangered since 1967. Biologists found the species while searching the Nantahala National Forest in Graham County for colonies that survived white-nose syndrome (WNS).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had recently captured little brown bats, another WNS-susceptible species, in the area and expanded our survey effort in the hopes of catching more little brown bats and possibly other WNS-survivor species,\u201d NCWRC bat biologist Katherine Etchison said.<\/p>\n
White-nose syndrome has killed an estimated 6.7 million bats since 2006 and has been especially damaging to bat populations in North Carolina\u2019s mountains.<\/p>\n
Despite their name, Indiana bats are native to several eastern states. Wildlife specialists said a single Indiana bat was confirmed in Haywood County five years ago during a roost survey, a method used to identify critical habitat. Mist-netting, by comparison, allows biologists to capture and examine bats by hand.<\/p>\n
Bats consume billions of insects each year, providing an important ecological service. Indiana bats can live for about 14 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Biologists with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) discovered an endangered bat species that had not been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[42635,2027,79,201,180173],"class_list":["post-774316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bats","tag-endangered-species","tag-science","tag-wildlife","tag-wildlife-resources-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}