Arctic Science Journeys
Radio Script
1996

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Bats in Alaska
(Re-master from 1/96)
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STORY: There's nothing wrong with your radio. The clicks and chirps are the echo-location calls of bats recorded on a dusky night in Southeast Alaska. When you think of Alaska's wildlife, bats are probably the last thing that come to mind. But Doreen Parker thinks about bats a great deal. She's a graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and has just completed a study of bats in Southeast Alaska.

Parker: "People told me there weren't bats in Alaska and I had seen them. You know, I had seen them flying around the streetlights in Ketchikan, and people would say, "Oh no, there's no bats in Alaska." But they are here, and nobody really knew what species were here."

In fact, Alaska is home to five species of bats. There's the little brown bat, the California bat, the Keen's bat, the long-legged bat, and the silver-hair bat. Doreen Parker says bats have been seen throughout nearly all of Alaska.

Parker: "They seem to be limited by the extent of trees. They are north of the Arctic Circle in summertime, which is real interesting because it doesn't get dark up there during most of the summer."

Doreen Parker's study chronicled the habitats bats in Southeast Alaska prefer. To monitor the bats, she set up special recorders in the forest to listen to the echo-location calls bats make during their nightly forays. She placed the recorders in old-growth forests, clearcuts, and second-growth forests, and discovered that bats favored old-growth forests.

Parker: "Some of the characteristics of the old growth are very important to bats--the diverse canopy structure, the big old trees with the loose bark falling away from the tree trunk, there's snags, decaying trees, trees with cavities and old woodpecker holes for them to roost in."

But the amount of old-growth forests left for bats and other wildlife in Southeast Alaska is diminishing. Doreen Parker is concerned about what that may mean for the future of bats in Alaska.

Parker: "As far as merchantable timber, which is also the highly productive old-growth forests that is good wildlife habitat, that's beginning to get a little scarce. I think we need to be careful that we don't harvest all of it now, and that's for wildlife and for future harvests, because if we harvest it all now we can't harvest it later, or at least not any time soon."

In Fairbanks, this is Debra Damron reporting for Arctic Science Journeys.