Education is the key to understanding an issue and the Southeastern Bat Diversity Network hopes to allow the public a peek into the important research focusing on bats during the first day of a week-long Bat Blitz. On Monday, July 23, the general public is invited to come out and gain a better understanding of what bat biologists do through the course of their duties.
The Bat Blitz is an annual event that the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is hosting in conjunction with the University of the South. The public portion of the event will take place at Angel Park in Sewanee, Tn., on July 23, from 7:30-9 p.m.. This will give the public an opportunity to listen talks given by bat researchers and biologists regarding bat ecology and their importance to the ecosystem and humans. There will be opportunities to view some of the equipment used to survey for bats and possibly see bats captured.
The event itself is important to agencies managing lands of the state as efforts from the blitz produce species occurrences in a portion of the state that has been under surveyed for bats. Knowing what species of bats occur in an area allows for increased management/conservation activities to occur. Also, with the declines of some bat species in the state, the increased effort provided by the event allows agencies to determine not only species occurrences of rare, threatened, endangered, and declining species, but possible densities as well.