Bats offer benefits for environment
By Trudy Stewart — Journal Staff

Bats are not the scary creatures of vampire film and legend. They are extremely beneficial for the environment, said Jim Hardin, a professor in wildlife at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

“A little brown bat will eat about 3,000 insects a night,” said Hardin, who did his graduate research on bats. Generally, the little browns live in trees or caves near water sources, Hardin said. But sometimes they find a nice cedar-sided house like Tim and Jodi Doxrude’s Whiting home.

“Our houses are ideal substitutes for hollow trees or caves. Our attics are like big, insulated caves,” Hardin said. The only other kind of bat generally found in Wisconsin are tree bats, which live almost exclusively in trees, he said.

Usually, a house might have a dozen or so little brown bats, but if a colony grows large, then urine and fecal odors become a problem. “Obviously, it’s not something you want a big buildup of,” Hardin said.

Health concerns always arise when dealing with feces, he said. Inhaling the fungus that grows on bat feces, or guano, can cause the respiratory disease histoplasmosis.

Bats, like all mammals, can carry rabies, Hardin said. “It turns out bats in the eastern part of the United States have an extremely low incidence of rabies.”

Rather than calling an exterminator, bring in a bat expert to seal entry points in your home with excluders, said Tom “The Batman” Arndt of Wisconsin Bat Removal, Iola. Bats can exit but cannot re-enter, so they are forced to relocate.

If the colony is large or the siding is older, it may be more cost-effective to tear the siding off, Arndt said. The bats just fly away. Then droppings are cleaned away, and a chemical is sprayed onto surfaces to eliminate odors and kill histoplasmosis fungus, he said.

Bats are smart. If disturbed, it doesn’t take them long to find another shelter, said Dino Tlachac, a school and park naturalist. But you don’t want them to take up residence in your neighbors’ houses. Setting up several specially designed bat houses nearby to give the bats a new source of shelter enhances the chances for a successful relocation.

“Bats are barometers of the environment. They are more sensitive to changes,” Tlachac said. “They can’t adapt fast so they disappear. They’re what’s called an indicator species.”

Originally published in Stevens Point Journal, Monday September 1, 2003