Tips for making bat boxes safer for bats – Human-Wildlife Interactions

Text on this page by Reed Crawford, with contributions from Joy O’Keefe. Updated in September 2022.Our lab has been conducting research on artificial bat roosts (e.g., bat boxes or houses) since 2015, with ongoing projects in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, and Minnesota. Increasingly, we are aware of bat mortality in bat boxes that is likely attributable to overheating. For instance, recent work in Australia documented the deaths of 30 juvenile large forest bats from hyperthermia in a dark-green bat box1. Other researchers are also noting the potential dangers of boxes that get too hot and can be dangerous to bats. We published a perspectives paper on the topic of heat stress in bat boxes in the journal Conservation Science and Practice2. On the other hand, we see great potential for enhancing the suitability of artificial roosts for bats via design changes that promote heat retention at night, when developing pups are left alone in the roost. Here, we provide some background an...