Bear and the Bats: Smokey Bear Gets New Roommates

  • By Paul Wade, Kary Schlick and Debra Schweizer
A group of people, dressed in fire and forest uniforms, assist a man carrying a bat house, up a ladder. Ladders lean against a cabin with workers on them.

We all know bears aren’t big on sharing their living space, but once again Smokey Bear shows us he is one of the friendliest, most approachable bears there is by letting some unique forest friends stay in his cabin at the Tri-County Fairgrounds in Bishop, California

Close to 100 bats were found roosting in the cabin’s rafters in spring 2016 during a routine inspection. Smokey Bear’s Cabin is filled with educational material and used in the summer by nearly 50,000 visitors throughout the year starting with Bishop Mule Days, a six-day annual festival, leading up to Memorial Day, that celebrates the mule. Summer events like the home and garden show, state high school rodeo finals and various tri-county fair activities provide the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Cal Fire, and National Park Service an opportunity to conduct community outreach from its cabin doors.

“We knew disturbing them during winter is especially harmful. They have little stored fat to survive the cold if forced from their overwintering site to find a new home. This could be life threatening.”

When Smokey does use his cabin, he expects it to be neat and tidy. Turns out bats are the Oscar Madison of roommates, leaving a mess as they come and go from their feeding on hundreds to thousands of insects, just in one night.

Luckily for the bats, employees from the Inyo National Forest, BLM and Cal Fire understood their vital ecological and economic role and decided to find a peaceful solution so the bear and the bats could co-exist safely.

Two men stand at the top of two ladders installing a box to an A-framed building.

Angel Avila, a U.S. Forest Service Fire Prevention employee on the Inyo National Forest, and Sergio Rivera, a firefighter with Cal Fire, install a bat house recycled from a Chevy Volt battery cover onto the side of Smokey Bear’s Cabin at the Tri-County Fairgrounds in Bishop, California, March 15, 2017. (USDA photo by Kary Schlick)

A women reaches up to grab a construction tool from a man on a ladder.

Sheena Waters, a Bureau of Land Management employee, assists Angel Avila, an employee from the Inyo National Forest, with a nail gun during the installation of a bat house, recycled from a Chevy Volt battery cover, onto the side of Smokey Bear’s Cabin at the Tri-County Fairgrounds in Bishop, California, March 15, 2017. (USDA photo by Kary Schlick)

When we found them, winter had begun. They were attracted to the cabin as a warm place to overwinter and raise their young,” said Kary Schlick, a Forest Service fish and wildlife biologist on the Inyo National Forest. “We knew disturbing them during winter is especially harmful. They have little stored fat to survive the cold if forced from their overwintering site to find a new home. This could be life threatening.”

Because the cabin wouldn’t be needed until the following May, Schlick and her team decided to let them be, hoping the bats would end their lease agreement and leave quietly. Once the bats moved on, the plan was to swiftly plug up the cracks used to access the inside of the cabin, which contained potential hazards such as string that could entangle them or sticky surfaces that could trap them. Ideas were tossed around on how best to relocate the winged creatures and in early March 2017, before repairs were made, a strange answer arrived in the form of a Chevy Volt.

“We had heard about another [Forest Service] region using parts from the electric Chevy Volt to mimic a bat house with success,” said Schlick. “Basically [the Forest Service] connected with Chevy on the topic of recycling and [the car maker] donated parts from their Volt vehicle, more specifically, its battery carrier container, which makes for a perfect home for bats,” said Schlick.

The suitcase sized, black, recycled plastic container provides room for up to 100 bats. Its material should hold up well in the high desert heat in Bishop and since it is black, solar radiation should provide a nice warm environment during the winter, according to Schlick.

Weeks after the box was installed in the eastside apex of the A-shaped cabin a night survey detected bats had indeed moved into the Chevy Volt bat house. Smokey was pleased to know none were found inside his cabin.

“We are hopeful returning bats will find this new, safe dream house for years to come and Smokey can continue sharing his fire prevention message and tell the story of how he got new roommates,” said Schlick.

“We are hopeful returning bats will find this new, safe dream house for years to come and Smokey can continue sharing his fire prevention message and tell the story of how he got new roommates,” said Schlick.

Inyo National Forest provides healthy and diverse landscapes, from local mines, caves and buildings, for over 15 species of bats. Bats eat tons of insects, saving our farmers billions of dollars every year, reducing the need for pesticides. Many of these insects are serious agricultural or forests pests, and spread disease to humans or livestock. Local bats eat mosquitos, moths, and also feed on ground beetles and scorpions.

These beneficial creatures are in decline. A new disease, White Nose-Syndrome, has killed over six million bats in just six years as they hibernate in caves and mines in the U.S. and Canada. The impact of this disease is frightening—it can kill more than 90% of bats in a cave in just a few years. Although WNS has not been discovered in California, visitors to bat roosts could accidentally transfer the fungus and are encouraged to adequately sanitize footwear to prevent the spread of this deadly disease.

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