Managing Bats in Buildings

The Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative Atlantic Region has developed comprehensive guidance for wildlife management agencies, pest control agencies, and the public on how to manage bats in buildings. 

As we are moving our focus to managing bats in Canada to a holistic bat health approach, it is important to teach Canadians how to safely live with bats and see these human-wildlife interactions as opportunities to protect bats’ sensitive populations, rather than only considering the option to remove bats from buildings.

As part of two Habitat Stewardship Program funded projects, CWHC Atlantic worked closely with the provincial agencies responsible for managing wildlife in all four Atlantic provinces to develop province-specific guidance on how to manage bats in buildings. From 2018 to 2020, in-person workshops were delivered in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, aimed at pest control operators and wildlife managers, to train participants in best practices on managing bats in buildings and other anthropogenic structures. These workshops focused not only on how to remove bats from buildings, but also how to safely live with bats in buildings and even how to encourage bats to roost in or near buildings. The workshop delivered in New Brunswick was recorded and can be seen in full on our CWHC YouTube channel. 
Complementing the in-person workshops are various guidance documents. For each of the Atlantic provinces there is a full document for wildlife managers covering all aspects of bats in buildings, there is a guide for conservation-minded bat exclusion aimed at pest control agencies, and there is a one-page infographic created for the public. All documents are available in English and in French. While these documents were created specifically for the Atlantic provinces, CWHC encourages wildlife divisions of other regions to adapt this material for their own purposes as they see fit. 

Submitted by Jordi Segers

This article was part of our Bat Monthly newsletter of February 2021. Click here to read the full newsletter.