Local families, visiting tourists and eastern Idaho naturalists gathered at Harriman State Park on Sept. 20 for the last Bat Night of the year — an educational evening focused on Idaho’s bats 

Bat Night began in 2017 and takes place once a month in June, July and August at both the Idaho Falls Zoo and Harriman State Park.

Brian Bybee, a wildlife biologist with Idaho National Laboratory, explained how the program got started.

“Well, back in 2017, we got thinking with the zoo, let’s start doing some educational nights talking about bats,” Bybee said. “So, we started and did some test ones in 2017, and then 2018 was our first official year doing it.”

The program originally featured one event each summer focused on bats and their impact on the local ecosystem. In the last few years, Bybee said, there have been four held annually at the Idaho Falls Zoo.

In 2023, Bat Night expanded to Harriman State Park. Harriman has a rich history with bats, many of which return over the course of their lifespan. Historic barns in the 11,000-acre park have had more than 100 years of bat occupancy. These barns also serve as maternity wards where mothers raise their young.

Research data gathered by a BYU–Idaho student research group and local wildlife biologists indicate the park is home to at least five of the seven bat species found in Idaho.

Ellie Simmons, a senior at BYUI, has been leading a student research project on bats for the past six months. She said her team has already discovered unique patterns.

“We know that both little brown myotis and long-eared myotis share the same barn,” Simmons said. “But one species shows up almost a month and a half earlier than the other. That’s something we want to keep watching as we process the rest of our data.”

The group has placed detectors at five sites, including Harriman, Island Park and Madison Middle School. The devices record echolocation calls on SD cards, which are then sorted using software to identify species.

Simmons said early analysis shows western small-footed myotis may pause at Harriman for a few weeks in June before moving north.

Other findings have been just as striking. “We haven’t seen many hoary bats, which are the most susceptible to wind energy,” Simmons said. “That has been an interesting result.”

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “nearly one-fifth of Idaho’s electricity generating capacity and one-sixth of its generation comes from wind turbines.”

Simmons hypothesized that the large number of wind turbines in southeastern Idaho could be contributing to the low hoary bat populations.

Additionally, Bybee said their call can sometimes be confused with the big brown bat on audio recording devices since their frequencies are similar.

Gregg Losinski, environmental education and outreach coordinator for Idaho National Laboratory’s K-14 program, said Bat Night helps people understand why bats are so important.

“Once people learn about bats, they’re usually not as afraid of them,” Losinski said. “They realize how important they are to agriculture. Without bats, there are more pests, which means more pesticides, higher costs and less healthy food. Bats help protect our crops. They save millions of dollars in insect control every year. Bats are really important to our famous potatoes.”

Losinski added that projects like this encourage the public to see environmental issues through a broader lens. “Everything has a cost,” he said. “Our job is to make people aware of those costs so they can make better decisions.”

For students like Mikayla Khilobok, a sophomore from Rexburg, joining the project has been an unexpected but meaningful experience.

“It was my first week of college and my mentor introduced me to Ellie,” said Khilobok. “He just told me, ‘You’re going to study bats with her.’ I thought they were so cool. They save millions of dollars in insect control just in Idaho. If you don’t like mosquitoes, you should love bats.”

Another part of this bat research team is Grace Stewart, who grew up in Maine and didn’t really interact with bats at all. However, after joining the group, Stewart realized how much she could learn from bats. “After the first Bat Night, I had learned so much and had so many facts to share,” she said with a laugh.

Simmons, Khilobok and Stewart have pushed through broken bones, sickness, early mornings and late nights to gather this data.

Jericho Whiting, a BYU–Idaho professor in the wildlife biology department with a Ph.D., has published more than 50 research papers on a variety of topics, including bats. He believes in the importance of students getting hands-on work in the field and helped Simmons assemble her team by introducing her to other students.

“Simmons’ research, when she presents it, will show that Harriman is a summer roost but also a maternity site wedged in here as well. This has not been documented in scientific literature,” Whiting said, noting the major gap in documented research of bats in the eastern United States compared with the western United States. A Bat Night attendee asked if this was a rare occurrence, and Whiting said it was impossible to know because of the lack of research into bats.

Simmons said Bat Night is one way to share both the science and the story of bats with the public.