From the moment you meet Niki Desautels, you know what she’s about.
“I grew up in a very animal-centric household. We didn't play with dolls or read fairy tales. We watched PBS and had stuffed animals,” Desautels said.
Her backpack is adorned with bat pins. A stuffed bat toy hangs off the side. The Seattle-based science author has a thing about bats.
Now, she’s written “For the Love of Bats,” a book about bats in the Western United States — their biology, natural history and how we can work to protect them. It’s filled with anecdotes of Desautels seeking and discovering facts about bats.
“ I really wanted to kind of bring people along on my journey,” she said.
Each chapter focuses on a different place in the West, and a different bat species. There are 32 species of bats in the Western United States.
“They're all incredibly unique and have their own behaviors and coloring and diets and society complexes,” Desautels said.
In the Northwest, bats act as pest control for agriculture and add nutrients to the soil that keep forests healthy. The nocturnal mammals are often around, even in cities, but because they keep different hours from most humans, it can be easy to miss them.
“ Bats are one of the most understudied mammals we have,” Desautels said. “Of course, they're hard to study, but they've also really been unpopular for a long time, which led to less people wanting to get involved in them, or less funding for efforts around bats.”
That’s part of the reason why, five years ago, in partnership with the Woodland Park Zoo and Bats Northwest, Desautels started a community science program that anyone can participate in. It’s called Bat Activity Trends.
Program participants head out at sunset anytime between June and September, when bats are most active. Then, they count the number of bat passes in the area, which can give insight into bat activity. Desautels said she hopes scientists and communities can use the tool to make informed decisions about bat conservation.
“There's a lot of information we're still trying to gather, especially when it comes to just some baseline questions, like, ‘Where are our bats?’ ’Where are they roosting?’” Desautels said.
With Halloween around the corner, there’s plenty of bat decor and bat costumes to remind us that these furry flyers are an important part of the ecosystem. It’s also the time of year when real bats are most often seen in unexpected places.
Desautels said this is when many bats in the Pacific Northwest are migrating to warmer places, mating, or hunkering down to hibernate.
“This is the most common time of the year for people to spot bats, like low on trees, in the eaves, on sides of buildings where they usually aren't, because they are moving across the landscape in a lot of different ways,” Desautels said.
Desautels said as bats change roosts, they might find refuge in the eaves of a roof or in a garage — but they will usually leave on their own in a few nights.
There is a small chance a bat could have rabies.
“Less than 1% of bat populations have a rabid bat within them. So it is very unlikely to encounter a rabid bat,” Desautels said.
But it is important to take necessary precautions and never touch a bat. If you find a bat that does need to be moved, you can call the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for help.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
