Brazilian bat found on Salt Spring nature reserve
Climate change could be behind species’ first documented appearance in Canada
ABOARD THE MV POLAR PRINCE — Its name is reminiscent of steamy South American jungles. But through determination and an amazingly swift flight, the Brazilian free-tailed bat has made its way to Salt Spring Island — a Canadian first — and in doing so is also shedding light on climate change.
Participants on the final leg of the Canada C3 150-day, 23,000-kilometre voyage around Canada’s three coastlines, learned of the medium-sized bat during a series of presentations Thursday by Salt Spring islanders.
“I don’t think anyone’s seen it,” John Borst, president of Salt Spring Island Conservancy, said in an interview. “But the bat experts were listening to it and said: ‘I haven’t heard that one before.’ ”
A paper published in the journal Northwestern Naturalist and available online in BioOne notes that the Brazilian freetailed bat is a “fast long-distance flyer,” previously recorded in southern Idaho, Oregon, and South Dakota, but never Canada. Climate change is a theory behind the bat’s expansion north.
The authors are Peter Ommundsen and Laura Matthias of Salt Spring Island and Cori Lausen of Kaslo.
Flight speed exceeds all other bat species tested and might exceed that of the fastest birds, the paper notes. Separate research has clocked the bats at up to 160 kilometres an hour.
On Salt Spring, researchers conducting May-to-September acoustic surveys for bats in 2016 at 18-hectare Blackburn Lake nature reserve recorded the Brazilian free-tailed bat on at least 30 nights. Three acoustic records were also obtained in Metro Vancouver in 2016, and two on Salt Spring in 2015.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Brazilian free-tailed bat is abundant with a stable population, found as far afield as southern Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, and the Falkland Islands. “It is an insectivorous, migratory species forming large colonies with millions of individuals.”
Previously documented species on Salt Spring include the big brown, hoary, Townsend’s big-eared, and silver-haired bats, as well as California, Yuma, little brown, and Keen’s long-eared myotis.
Salt Spring Island is about 700 kilometres from the closest site in the U.S. where the Brazilian free-tailed bat has been detected — “well within the measured 1,800-kilometre-plus flight capacity of this species,” the paper notes. Bats in North America are at risk of white-nose syndrome, a deadly fast-spreading fungus introduced from Europe. So far, it has been confirmed in five provinces and 31 states, including Washington state.
Blackburn Lake nature reserve, a former organic golf course that used no pesticides, lies within the coastal Douglas fir biogeoclimatic zone, with a Mediterranean climate. It is home to more than 100 bird species and more than 20 plant and animal species at risk — and, occasionally, some large predators.
Conservancy executive director Christine Torgrimson spotted a cougar last July at Blackburn Lake. “I heard it kill something,” she said. “I didn’t know what it was, so I wandered down, and bam! It came running out of the forest. It was amazing.”
Rabbits and black-tailed deer are among prey for cougars on the island.
The conservancy’s annual budget varies from about $100,00 to $150,000, plus added grants of $200,000 to $500,000.
Canada C3 participants also learned about the internment of Japanese during the Second World War, the settlement by Hawaiians known as Kanakas, homeless using art to earn money and create awareness, and the Salt Spring Apple Co., which boasts more than 300 varieties of heritage and connoisseur apples.
The C3 voyage aboard the 72-metre Polar Prince icebreaker ends Saturday in Victoria. The vessel is to arrive at the Inner Harbour about 11 a.m. and welcoming events begin at noon.