NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/708333
62 NEBRASKAland • AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2016 they are parallel to the wind and barely spin when wind speeds are below the level at which they are capable of generating electricity – about 7.5 mph – can reduce mortalities by 30 percent. Another study said increasing those operating speeds to 18 or 20 mph cut bat losses by 40 to 90 percent. The decline is due to most bats flying when wind speeds are low. Such adjustments are now being required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at facilities where not doing so could harm threatened and endangered species such as the Indiana and northern long-eared bat. In keeping with the "green" image of the renewable energy industry, the American Wind Energy Association, with support of many of its members, has agreed to voluntarily make these operating adjustments during the fall migration. Research The threats to bats from wind energy and white-nose syndrome have exponentially increased the amount of funding for and research being conducted on bats in Nebraska and elsewhere. Previously, most studies in Nebraska were conducted by university professors that had such an interest in the flying mammals that they often funded the projects themselves. Those researchers include the husband and wife team of Cliff Lemen and Patricia Freeman, both retired from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who continue to work in bat research and monitoring funded by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the schools and others. Also heavily involved is Keith Geluso, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney who began his bat research as a boy with his father, Ken Geluso, who is retired from the University of Nebraska at Omaha but continues to help his son and others on bat research. Jeremy White, a faculty member at UNO, who also studied there under Ken Geluso, is also involved. While Geluso works in western Nebraska and the others in the east, they all work together on some labor-intensive projects. Numerous graduate and undergraduate students at all three universities, including several working under Craig Allen at the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at UNL, and Mike Fritz, a Game and Parks Commission nongame biologist, are working on bat studies as well. Until recently, Nebraska research has mostly involved using mist nets to catch bats coming to water to drink at night, or by crawling into caves and mines to survey hibernating or roosting bats. These surveys continue to add to what is known about the distribution of Nebraska's bat species, and has provided evidence of the expansion of the range of some species, including the evening bat, which Keith Geluso didn't find along the Platte River near Kearney when he moved there in 2006 but now catches regularly. When threats to a species appear, however, so does funding for more intensive research and the use of high- tech and costly methods. With a grant obtained by the Commission through the Fish and Wildlife Service, Lemen, White and Freeman worked on a two- year radio tracking study of northern long-eared bats at Fontenelle Forest in Bellevue, where Ken Geluso began surveying bats more than 20 years ago. Tiny transmitters were glued to the backs of 15 bats in Oct. 2014 with hope of confirming the belief that the species was hibernating in mines near Weeping Water and Louisville, where specimens were collected in the 1960s and 70s. The bats stayed at Fontenelle longer than expected, some into November. Two tagged bats shrugged off the cold and simply didn't leave their roost trees for seven straight nights. Most bats outlasted the battery life on their transmitters, which last just 10 to 20 A northern long-eared bat takes flight after emerging from a gap in a cabin wall at Catron Camp and Retreat Center, a Girl Scout camp near Nebraska City. This bat and others established a maternity colony, the first documented in Nebraska, in the space between the walls of several of the cabins and came and went through a 1 centimeter wide opening. They continue to use the site.