Cook County Assessor/Land Commissioner Betty Schultz presented commissioners with information she had received about the plight of the northern long-eared bat at the commissioners’ May 13, 2014 meeting.
Schultz told the commissioners that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) are considering listing the northern long-eared bat as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. “This is something that should be on our radar,” Schultz said.
If it goes through, the ruling that will protect the bats could have a disastrous effect on loggers, sawmill owners, and construction companies during the summer months when bats are in their summer habitat and spend time roosting underneath cavities or in bark of both live and dead trees, caves and mines, and in structures like barns or sheds.
Loggers would be directly affected because one of the key provisions in the act is to prohibit cutting of bat habitat during the bat’s maternity season, April 1 to September 30. No trees larger than 3 inches in diameter could be cut during the summer under the rules proposed by the FWS.
According to the FWS, the bats are suffering from white-nose syndrome a disease first observed in New York in 2006, but has since spread to the Midwest and Southwest, areas that are the core of its range. Since the discovery of the disease, 99 percent of the bats have disappeared in the Northeast. The disease was recently found in bats wintering in the Tower- Soudan underground mine on the Iron Range.
According to the FWS website, highway and commercial development, surface mining, and wind facility construction permanently remove habitat and are prevalent in many areas of this bat’s range. Timber harvest and forest management can remove or alter (improving or degrading) summer roosting and foraging habitat. Wind turbines kill bats, including northern long-eared bats, although only a small number have been documented to date
The medium-sized bats are 3 to 3.7 inches with a wingspan of 9- to 10-inches with fur colored medium to dark brown on the back and tawny to pale-brown on the underside. They eat moths, flies, leafhoppers, caddis fish, and beetles and are found in 39 states.
The Endangered Species Act protects animals and plants that are in danger of becoming extinct.
Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Landwehr has joined with natural resources officials from Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana in asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to delay its plan to protect the bat because the proposed restrictions go too far and will greatly harm the forest industry.
The FWS will make its final decision on the northern long-eared bat at the end of October.
Commissioner Garry Gamble expressed frustration with the proposal, asking what loggers were supposed to do if they can’t ship wood due to the gypsy moth quarantine and then can’t cut wood due to the act to protect the bats?
Commissioner Bruce Martinson asked Schultz if Gunflint District Ranger Nancy Larson had gotten back to her about the proposed land trade between the county and the U.S. Forest Service for county-owned land in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) for land the USFS owns outside the BWCAW. Schultz said that according to Larson, the USFS would shift its resources to dealing with the endangered species act concerning the bats if it goes through, and that might limit their resources to dealing with the land trade.
Leave a Reply