Who Speaks for the Bats?by Janet Partlow Here in mid-June, I have just listened to several newscasts about the "outbreak" of bats in our Governor's Mansion. I have fielded several calls about this issue, including one from a fellow who wants to attract bats to his Christmas tree farm! Hooray! I do not wish to discount a family's worry and distress, especially with a newborn daughter in the house. In my other life I am a physician assistant with a strong interest in public health, and I know there are real issues to be considered. But I have also spent many years studying, handling and watching bats. In all the public outcry about them, I keep waiting for those who will speak for the bats. Imagine it is 200 years ago. You are sitting on a hillside over the estuary, watching the sunset. There is no Capitol Lake, nor any 5th Avenue bridge. As the light fades out of the sky, the tide rushes freely in, filling the estuary with saltwater. When later the tide withdraws, there is a tidal mudflat, rich with clams, polychaete worms, copepods and crabs. Higher in the salt marsh, the salt-adapted grasses and pickleweed compete for space. Over it all there are millions of flying insects: midges and mosquitoes, flies and beetles, moths and dragonflies. The bats are lured out of their daytime roosts by the waning light and the buzz of the insects. There are thousands of bats attracted to the estuary; they swoop, flutter and echolocate their prey in a dazzling display of flight. One Little Brown Bat will eat 500 mosquitoes in an hour. Throughout the night, the ballet goes on; while some bats retire the field to digest their load, others come in to gorge on abundant food. As the night moves towards day, the sky behind the Mountain lightens and pinks up. The bats, now glutted from the night's feasting, move towards their daytime roosts on the hills overlooking the Deschutes estuary. They seek old-growth evergreen trees and Bigleaf Maple, the thick bark now ridged and pulled away slightly from the tree. They need small wood crevices, where heat can build up and they can maintain their hard-won reserves of fat. They will stuff themselves into the crevices; depending on the size of the roost, there may be 500 bats or more stuffed in together. They share heat, and soon the crevice warms up even more. In this safe place, away from predators, they make their families, raise and breastfeed their single young, and lay down body fat for the hard winter's hibernation to follow. Today, the estuary has been killed by the dam, and the old-growth trees are gone. There are some older evergreens and maples on the hillsides below the Governor's Mansion, but recently many were logged off, when the extensive Heritage Park hillside trail was put in. The bats need to adapt to survive. The Mansion has several stories, solid red brick construction and good exposure to the sun's warmth. This makes a good spot to roost for the day. Not only the Governor's family looks for safety behind its walls. And so the dance goes on: in the battle of animals' rights over human rights, it almost always comes down to human needs: the logging, the dam, the Heritage Park Trail all took precedence over the needs of animals. But though I speak now for bats, I do not forget that we all dance together here: what happens to the bats, the estuary, the trees, eventually happens to us all. Janet Partlow is a staff writer for the Green Pages.
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