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BLM worker doesn't bat eye over shift to flying mammals By BETH QUINN GLENDALE -- Perched on a ladder propped under a bridge across Riffle Creek, Geoff Kelley fingered the bolts securing the rectangular pine box to the concrete span. For a Bureau of Land Management technician accustomed to checking the nesting success of the threatened northern spotted owls and counting salamanders and slugs on land scheduled for logging, creating bat roosts came as something of a novelty. "It was really fun to do because it's like, what are we doing is strictly for wildlife and not connected to timber extraction," he says. "It was a fun project because we're doing something good." That something good included building 17 pine bat houses, selecting bridges that offered enough height to discourage both natural predators and human vandals, and carting extension ladders, generators and drills down steep banks to erect the roosts. The roosts can hold as many as 50 bats but aren't meant to be permanent homes. They're intended to provide temporary shelter for bats who've gorged on insects hatched from the water below. After three or four foraging trips -- and pit stops -- each night, the local bats will head for their daytime roosts in the surrounding forest. Despite prevailing misconceptions, Southern Oregon University biology professor Stephen Cross says most of the 12 local bat species prefer old-growth trees to caves for temporary day and night roosts. "They like crevices and there's usually a lot more crevices in the older trees that have been cut down," he says. "That's why bat boxes may help to mitigate the loss of roosting habitat." Similar roosts under Applegate Valley bridges have attracted hundreds of bats. "It definitely works," Cross says. Other local efforts to promote bat habitat on public lands include planting trees to hide mine entrances and restricting human but not bat access to mines by installing rebar grills. Although the difficulty of measuring bat populations has left scientists without specific numbers, 20 years of study have documented general population declines, with six bats now listed as Oregon sensitive species, including five crevice-dwellers. Despite the bad rap given to bats in myth and legend, they're generally harmless to humans but hold an important place in the ecosystem web of life. "They are the only really abundant nocturnal insectivorious species," Cross says. "They are natural insecticides, so why not promote them?" For scientists such as Cross, the BLM's bridge bat-roost program is not a permanent solution for habitat destroyed by logging. "I view it as a temporary measure until we can grow some old trees," he says. "It's much better to provide them with their natural habitat than something artificial that we have to maintain." For the BLM's Kelley, the success of the roosts won't be determined until the bats come out of hibernation next spring. Then technicians will check for guano under the bridge roosts and possibly don night-vision goggles to watch the creatures swoop in for their pit stops. Still, the novelty of working on a wildlife project that wasn't timber-related provided its own reward. "That was really satisfying," he says. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA