“There are lots of caves that used to have bats in them that have tourists in them now,” says Chris McGrath, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. That is no longer the case at the old Cranberry Mine 120 miles northwest of Charlotte. Fifteen thousand pounds of new gates now protect the bats that hibernate each winter in the long-abandoned iron-ore mine.
The Charlotte Observer reports that among the roughly 300 bats that winter in the mine are about 10 endangered Virginia big-eared bats (Corynorhinus townsendii virginianus). They share thousands of feet of tunnels with other bat species, including little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus) and eastern pipistrelles (Pipistrellus subflavus).
The newspaper says fewer than 300 Virginia big-eared bats are known to hibernate in South Carolina. McGrath has worked for nine years to win protection for the bats of Cranberry Mine, which, the Observer notes, has become “a favorite haunt of geologists, students and revelers and all-terrain-vehicle riders.”
The state commission, the paper said, “recently gained legal protection for 280 acres around this mine, bought its mineral rights, and, in November, finished installing five [bat-friendly] gates across its entrances.”
The Observer quotes Bat Conservation International as saying that humans have chased so many bats out of any natural caves that a large proportion of America's bat populations are now forced to take refuge in old mines.
A key player in this important bat-conservation project is longtime BCI partner Bob Currie, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in Asheville, North Carolina. Currie is an alumnus of the first field workshop conducted by BCI Founder Merlin Tuttle almost 25 years ago and has since been responsible for protecting numerous caves and mines used by bats around the country.
Currie told the newspaper that the temperature ranges, humidity, and airflow in parts of the abandoned mine seem to be a good fit for Virginia big-eared bats, and the mine could eventually become one of the state's most important hibernation sites.
“I'm really optimistic,” he said. “I think the conditions are right. We'll see if the bats agree.”
That optimism is shared by McGrath, who notes that since a gate was installed at a Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina, cave in 1986 (under Currie's direction), the number of Virginia big-eared bats has increased from 20 to at least 265.
“We're hoping,” he told the newspaper, “that by keeping people out of (Cranberry Mine), we'll see the same thing happen over here.
