Bat Festival educates, explains threats to animal
Wide-eyed children, some dressed as furry nocturnal mammals, and their families waited in line Saturday, clamoring to witness some smallwinged creatures in the Mitchell Park Domes – bats.
The Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory welcomed the sixth annual Bat Festival to Milwaukee, where organizers put on exhibits, shows and activities — bat shows, bat yoga and mock bat caves — to engage people about bats, an animal crucial to many ecosystems and agriculture across the nation. Habitat loss and disease pose a major threat to the animal.
“We’ve been looking forward to this all year,” said Anneke Lisberg, a biology professor at the University of WisconsinWhitewater.
Lisberg’s daughter, Marina, raced through a crowd to stand in front of a large, docile bat after one of the festival’s live bat shows. Marina, dressed in a bat costume her and her mother spent hours making for Halloween, posed for a picture in front of the bat.
“A lot of the fun is learning vicariously through your kids, nudging them to say, ‘Hey, ask this,’” Lisberg said.
Jennifer Redell, a conservation biologist at the state Department of Natural Resources, said an estimated 3,000 people attended the event, which was organized by the state DNR, Organization for Bat Conservation, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center in Madison.
While the event offered an outlet for family fun, many of the activities underscored the threats facing bats, especially in Wisconsin, a state that’s home to eight native bat species.
Researchers estimate the small, cave-dwelling mammal saves Wisconsin farmers $600 million to $1.5 billion on pesticides annually, according to the DNR.