Researching bats

My Summer with bats:

Over this past summer vacation I was employed for a second time at a company named North-East Ecological Services (NEES). This company functions chiefly as a contracted consulting group for surveying and reporting bat populations. As a member of the research field crew I dealt primarily with data collection, meaning that I had to help set up and take down nets, attend to certain nets throughout each night, remove captured animals and transport captured bats to a data processing station.

Once at the processing station each bat was measured and sampled for many various attributes. In the picture above a Myotis leibii is being examined to determine its approximate age. Rarer species, such as Myotis leibii were radio tagged in addition to being measured, so that over the course of the next week we could track them by means of radio telemetry triangulation.

In this picture a special adhesive is being applied to a shaved region on the back of a Myotis leibii.

Here the compact radio transmitter has just been secured to the bat. Within a few seconds it should have dried enough to release the bat and begin tracking it.
Once all aspects of the research are completed within satisfaction the data are compiled into a report to be given to our contractors. This year our two contractors were typical of NEES contractors: a wind company and a military organization. Gamesa Wind Energy employed us as consultants because they are required by law to survey the population before erecting wind turbines that regularly kill bats. Our other contractor, Argonne National Laboratories, represented the Airforce, which, as a military institution, is mandated to preserve all natural resources on its military installations, including rare bat populations. By their funding we were able to capture and track rare species on the installation, ultimately identifying the daytime roosting locations of these bats, which now can ensure the protection of these sites.
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