Bats help farmers by controlling the insect population, but many bat species are in danger of extinction

                                                                              Photo by James Wainscoat for Unsplash

Despite fears many people have about bats, they provide a lot of benefits to society, especially farmers. 

“There was a study some years ago that estimated that insect pest control provided by bats, the economic value of that was over $8 billion,” Alex Silvis, the endangered species coordinator for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, told Eric Douglas for a report by West Virginia Public Broadcasting. “It is a significant benefit to have bats for just insect control alone” -- which protects many crops.

Bats are in serious danger, however. According to Douglas' report: "In North America, more than 50% of all bat species have a “moderate to very high risk of extinction” in the next 15 years" because of diseases, pesticides and climate change. 

Douglas reports: "To learn more about bat populations, researchers must first find their caves. Even when they live within earshot of a paved road, getting to their front porch takes some work."

Silvis is among those researchers, and he spends time hiking into hard-to-reach places to identify where the bats live and provide estimated counts of the population.  

“The ecosystem is incredibly linked to one another in very complex ways,” John Moredock,
of the West Virginia Department of Agriculture, told Douglas. “One small change has big implications across many different areas of an ecosystem, many that are hard to predict.