- There we go.

We saw our first bat flying a little bit earlier than we were going to open nets.

So we kind of scrambled to get over here and open these nets real quick so that maybe we can take advantage of anybody who's out here flying.

- We're in Nantahala National Forest trying to catch bats.

- Oh!

Yeah.

- This species hasn't been caught in this part of western North Carolina in over a decade.

- Hi, little cutie.

- A fungus has been causing something called white-nose syndrome in hibernating bats and decimating populations across North America.

- For North Carolina, our biggest threat to bats is white-nose syndrome.

It's caused by a fungal pathogen that affects bats when they're hibernating.

Not all 17 bats in North Carolina hibernate, so it doesn't affect all species, which is the good news.

But the species that it affects the most, we have seen really significant population declines in, and those are really four species.

The Indiana bat, little brown bat, tricolored bat, and northern long-eared bat.

We've seen over 90% population declines for those species here in western North Carolina.

They've become so rare that they're really hard to even find.

So that's our job, really, is to figure out where these white-nose syndrome survivors are so we can help provide what they need so they can continue to survive.

- Alright, we're going to start.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Bat Blitz.

Thanks for being here.

We have a lot of questions about what bats are out here, so we really needed a huge survey effort to figure that out.

- This area used to be one of the best places in North Carolina to catch the four bat species most impacted by white-nose.

But for a decade, researchers haven't been encountering those bats.

- Last year, very incidentally, we caught some little brown bats in the area, and that's what spurred us to host a Blitz.

Find your team leaders and get ready to go.

Thanks again for being here, and good luck!

- More than 60 people have come together for this intensive bat survey.

For three nights, they'll go out from before sunset until 1 a.m.

and monitor nets across likely bat flyways.

Bats get a bad rap through negative stereotypes, but they play an important role in ecosystems, especially keeping insect populations in check.

- Bats in North Carolina all eat insects, and they eat a lot of insects.

A single female bat in the summertime can eat up to her body weight in insects, which is a lot if you really stop and think about eating your body weight in something.

So while we're sleeping all night, every night, these bats are out here being kind of an unsung hero in eating insects, controlling insect populations.

So even if you don't really love bats, I think you can, we can all find a way to respect bats and their place in the ecosystem.

We've got 21 total sites that should get surveyed during the course of this Blitz.

- One of the sites surveyed during the Blitz had an unusual feature.

So this cabin is 100 years old, and bats tend to like it and be around it, sometimes in it.

We spotted some bats snoozing in the shingles on the cabin.

- So what you're looking for is these brown cylinders, which are bat guano, bat droppings.

There's plenty.

So if you look back up in the shingle and shine a little light, right there.

You see these little noses?

There's one, two, and there's three right here.

- We happened upon this cabin one time through some surveys when we were in the area and realized there was some bat guano in and around the structure, and that led us to find some little brown bats.

We didn't see them in the building, we just caught them in our nets.

So they may come and go and use the building or they just may be in the area.

That's why we're here, that's why we're netting in kind of an unfamiliar or odd place for us.

Unusual place, I should say.

And hopefully we'll get lucky like we did last time we were here.

- To catch a bat, you have to think like a bat.

- We look for places that we think bats are flying, and especially look for corridors, like stream corridors or trails or roads, places that we can funnel bats into our nets.

This is called a miss net, and it's used for catching bats.

It's also used for catching birds.

It's the same type of net, we just use it a little bit differently and at different times of day.

We put them on these pulley ropes as well so that wherever a bat may land in the net, we can pull the net down to our level and get the bat out.

- Night one was rainy, so not ideal for bats to be out and about, but we still got lucky.

- Oh, I see him!

It's banded?

That's cool.

That's one of ours.

- You might be wondering why everyone looks like they're ready to do surgery.

To prevent the spread of white-nose, researchers scrub in and out each evening, sterilizing the clothes they wear, the nets they use, and decontaminating all tools and using new gloves between bats.

- Oh my goodness, there's so little.

- So this is a little brown bat.

This is what started off this whole idea of planning a blitz, is catching one of these guys at this site.

So we're happy to see this little brown tonight, especially with this rain.

It's always great to get a recapture.

It means this individual has survived since the last time we saw it.

And that's really great data for us and just good to see that these bats are surviving, even with white-nose.

So, very, very pleased for this little capture, yeah.

- Despite the rain, we also caught several eastern small-footed bats and a big brown bat, one of the bats most commonly found in human structures.

- A little bit more feisty.

- Surveying bats in Western North Carolina is important because we're trying to keep the species that we have here.

So we can't do any of that unless we know where they are, we know something about what they're relying on, what resources they need, so we can help to make sure they have those resources.

- On night two, hopes were high for better weather.

- We've got six nets up.

That's a big effort for us.

Usually we put up three or four, so we kind of threw all of our energy and effort at it and hopefully we'll reap the benefits.

- Efforts paid off in eastern red bat bounty.

- A red?

Aw, yay!

So this is an eastern red bat.

This is one of our most common species that we have in the state.

They roost in trees, and in the winter they'll sometimes overwinter under leaf litter on the ground.

- Eastern red bats are a migratory species, so they don't hibernate and aren't affected by white-nose.

We had an unwelcome but adorable visitor.

- Go, baby.

No, not towards me.

No, no.

Go, baby.

Go.

There you go.

They will destroy a net.

That's why we were all like, "Get those flying squirrels out of the net!"

- But the most exciting thing this evening was catching another rare species, a tricolored bat.

- We got a tricolored.

Yeah!

Go us!

That's why we're here.

So this is the other smallest bat in the state.

We've caught an eastern small-footed and a tricolored bat.

Now we have both of the smallest bats in the state.

Let's look at your wing.

- Is that two?

- I think we are.

Well, let me see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Woo, woo, woo, woo.

- At this point, I have no idea what's going on and why everyone is so excited.

- So anytime we see a juvenile bat, it's a really good sign for a white-nose-affected species because they're reproducing in this area.

It's a really helpful thing for their management to know that reproductive individuals are around for these rare species.

We're glad you're here, little juvenile.

Tonight went surprisingly well.

We had 11 bats total.

The big kind of highlight of the night were two tricolored bats.

The most exciting part of that is that they were both juveniles.

That means they were born this summer, and that's what we want to see.

We want to see these bats actually surviving a white-nose syndrome infection and reproducing.

And so this was evidence of reproduction in this area, and that's huge.

- Overall, the bat blitz caught 252 bats of eight species.

Another team also caught a little brown bat, which tells us more about where they're living.

The last night of the blitz had clear weather, and almost all sites had abnormally high captures of eastern red bats, 146 in total, plus some other migratory species.

They were likely taking advantage of the lack of rain.

Surveys like this one answer some questions and raise new ones as more data is gathered.

That mystery is what Katherine loves about working with bats.

- I've always been a pretty curious person, and bats make me endlessly curious.

There's so much that we don't know about them, so many things that I find truly fascinating about them, and just trying to answer those questions continually is just an itch I'll never fully scratch.

And so it's just fun to always work towards learning more about them and helping conserve these really special creatures in North Carolina, my home state.

- If you enjoyed that story, there's more where that came from.

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