|
Your help with any of these special needs will directly improve BCI’s ability to protect bats and bat habitats. To contribute or for more information, contact BCI’s Department of Development or call (512) 327-9721.
Bats & Radiation
Bats of the American West often roost in abandoned mines – and in the Colorado Plateau, that frequently means old uranium mines. So the question becomes: are bats harmed by the radiation that's usually emitted at uranium diggings and should they be excluded from these sites? BCI and its partners are trying to find the answer through the Bats and Abandoned Uranium Mines Project. But to enter and reliably survey these sites, we need a BladeWerx Sabre Alert2 radiation meter to gauge levels of alpha radiation. This precision instrument will allow us to accurately measure radiation levels that bats are exposed to in these mines. The device costs approximately $6,800.
Better Bat Detecting
BCI's field-training workshops teach the skills that biologists, land managers and others need to study and conserve bats. As the scourge of White-nose Syndrome spreads, those skills become even more important, particularly the use of bat-detector technology that does not require handling bats or entering roosts. A major value of our courses is hands-on work with a wide range of the most advanced detectors. But technology advances rapidly and our Workshop Program requires at least seven acoustic-monitoring models to keep up. These include: Pettersson D500x ($2,300); Wildlife Acoustics SM2-384 ($1,000) and EM3+GPS ($1,200); Binary Acoustics Technology AR125 ($1,100) and FR125+LCD ($850); Baton Bat Detector ($160); and AnaBat SD1 ($2,200). Total cost: $8,810.
Banners for Bats
BCI's Education and Marketing Departments are organizing and promoting International Year of the Bat events around the world. We're also participating in many educational celebrations. Year of the Bat, proclaimed by the United Nations for 2011-12, provides an unprecedented opportunity to tell the world about bats and BCI. Our visibility and impact will be enhanced dramatically with colorful banners that display some of our incredible bat photos and our new logo. We need six of these banners, and each one, along with a stand, costs about $500. |
