“Score one for the Mexican free-tailed bats,” says the Los Angeles Times. Plans to demolish a backwoods bridge in Orange County, south of LA, have been put on hold at least until more than 1,500 pregnant female bats that moved in under the bridge can have their babies.
“A disaster has been postponed, at least for now,” Stephanie Remington, a biologist who helped rally opposition, told Times reporter David Reyes. The bat proponents - and the newspaper - emphasized the experience in Austin, Texas, where bats at the downtown Congress Avenue Bridge have become a lucrative tourist attraction.
Bat Conservation International's Science Officer, Barbara French, told the newspaper, “Many bridges have been modified intentionally to make them bat-friendly because bats bring tourists. Our (bridge) colony brings $8 million in tourist revenue to Austin a year.”
Hotels in Austin market rooms that face the city's famous Congress Avenue Bridge so tourists can watch a colony of about 1.5 million bats take flight as night settles in. Such success stories have been rare in Southern California.
The Orange County bridge was built eight years ago so trucks hauling sediment from a dredging project could cross over busy Santiago Canyon Road. The plan was to remove the bridge by June 1. That's now been pushed back to October, when the bats will have migrated to Mexico.
Fearing the bats will return next mating season and discover that their home is gone, environmentalists hope to keep the bridge intact, the paper reports. The colony is believed to be the county's largest.
Orange County Supervisor Bill Campbell says he's received dozens of calls and emails about the bats. Now, he says, “We're thinking about relocating the bats or saving the bridge and incorporating it as part of the county's network of trails.”
While conservationists would prefer that the bridge remain, experts say another option is to build a giant bat house. The Orange County colony is small but helpful to local farmers, said Remington. She estimates the colony consumes 20 to 30 pounds of insects a night.
The Orange County bats are mostly Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis), the same species that has become such a hit in downtown Austin.
