Bat nights a hit as supporters try to educate

Free, nocturnal eco-tourism is growing with bat-spotting in the Catlins.

Local Forest & Bird volunteers have been hosting Bat Nights since 2014, and numbers are growing as word spreads further afield.

About 30 bat watchers, including Chinese visitors and a contingent from Dunedin, gathered in Owaka last Friday to drive through the dusk to a secluded bat hotspot along the Catlins River.

The group was taught to use bat detectors supplied by Forest & Bird and kept a keen lookout for the critically endangered creatures, New Zealand’s only endemic mammals.

"New Zealand has long and short-tailed bats, but due to habitat loss, short-tails have not been reported in the Catlins since 1899," Forest & Bird bat project co-ordinator Katriona Gower said.

"Our long-tailed bats are flying about, shouting at the top of their lungs at about 40kHz, and the bat-detector converts that to a range we can hear so we can keep an eye out for them.

"They’re using echo-location to navigate as well as hunting insects, so they need to swallow what they catch fast and keep shouting or they might fly into something in the dark."

Long-tailed bats have a wingspan of about 30cm and weigh about as much as a $2 coin.

They may roost in a different tree or other nook every day and are threatened by introduced mammals and the effects of chemical contamination on their food chain.

"We started out getting two to three visitors but that’s got up to as as many as 100," Mrs Gower said.

"That’s really heartening, because the aim is to grow an enthusiastic, caring interest in our wonderful bats through education."