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| North American Bat Monitoring Program | |
|---|---|
| Name | North American Bat Monitoring Program |
| Abbreviation | NABat |
| Formed | 2012 |
| Type | Collaborative monitoring initiative |
| Region | North America |
North American Bat Monitoring Program The North American Bat Monitoring Program is a continental-scale collaborative initiative that coordinates bat population monitoring across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It integrates standardized acoustic monitoring, roost counts, and statistical modeling to support species assessments, recovery planning, and management actions involving agencies such as the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and the Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad. The program leverages partnerships with academic institutions like the University of California, Davis, conservation NGOs such as the Bat Conservation International and the Canadian Wildlife Federation, and federal research laboratories including the U.S. Geological Survey.
NABat establishes continental protocols linking field methods, database systems, and analytical workflows used by stakeholders including the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Parks Canada Agency, and state or provincial wildlife agencies like the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. The program emphasizes repeatable sampling on probabilistic designs adapted to landscapes from the Great Plains to the Appalachian Mountains and biomes such as the Sonoran Desert and the Boreal Forest. NABat outputs inform listings under instruments like the Endangered Species Act and conservation plans crafted by entities including the IUCN and regional recovery teams.
The program emerged from workshops and pilot efforts convened by the North American Workshop on Bat Conservation and scientists affiliated with the Northeast Bat Working Group and the Western Bat Working Group. Early development drew on acoustic survey advances from research groups at the Smithsonian Institution and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and built on legacy datasets from state bat atlases and monitoring programs coordinated by the National Wildlife Federation. Formalization occurred with cooperative agreements among the U.S. Geological Survey, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and Mexican partners coordinated through institutions such as the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Primary objectives include estimating distribution and trend metrics for multiple bat species, detecting emergent threats such as white-nose syndrome impacts, and informing management by agencies like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission where wind-energy siting intersects bat habitat. Methodology blends standardized mobile acoustic transects, stationary detectors, and roost emergence counts conducted following protocols adapted from studies at the Bat Conservation and Research Unit and academic protocols used at the University of Alberta and the University of Florida. Sampling designs employ stratified randomization across survey units defined by frameworks such as the North American Breeding Bird Survey grid and use analysis approaches developed by statisticians at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and the Canadian Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation.
Data collection uses ultrasonic detectors from manufacturers used by researchers at the Macaulay Library and call-identification software and classifiers calibrated against voucher recordings archived at the California Academy of Sciences and the Royal Ontario Museum. Acoustic records, manual roost counts, and acoustic activity indices are uploaded to centralized repositories maintained by partners including the Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation program and data stewards at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility node in Canada. Analytical pipelines apply occupancy modeling and trend estimation methods drawn from literature associated with the National Ecological Observatory Network and statistical packages developed by researchers at the University of Washington and the Pennsylvania State University.
NABat coordinates a wide network of participants ranging from federal agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration when coastal habitats are involved, to academic researchers at institutions such as the University of Guelph, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Texas at Austin. Non-governmental partners include Nature Conservancy chapters, the Society for Conservation Biology membership, and local chapters of the Audubon Society. International collaboration involves organizations like the Commission for Environmental Cooperation and researchers linked to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute for comparative studies.
NABat has generated continental-scale evidence of distribution shifts, activity declines in species such as the little brown myotis and the northern long-eared bat, and spatial patterns of susceptibility to threats including white-nose syndrome and wind-energy mortality documented by the Avian and Bat Monitoring Institute. Results have supported recovery actions under the Endangered Species Act listings, influenced mitigation guidelines by the Bureau of Land Management, and informed habitat conservation priorities used by the NatureServe network and regional recovery teams such as those convened through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Key challenges include standardizing acoustic classification across vendor platforms used by agencies like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, addressing spatial and taxonomic sampling gaps in regions such as northern Mexico and the Arctic fringe, and integrating genetic and mark–recapture data from labs at institutions like the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Future directions emphasize scaling automated classifiers developed at the University of Florida and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, expanding partnerships with energy-sector stakeholders such as the Department of Energy, and aligning monitoring outputs with policy frameworks used by the Convention on Biological Diversity and transboundary conservation initiatives.
Category:Wildlife monitoring