Have they actually, truly found this virus in bat populations or does this virus not exist in the wild?
As far as I've been able to determine, they have not found this virus existing in an animal population.
I know some animals have tested positive for it but does that mean a reservoir?
I know that it was recently found to be widespread in farmed mink in Scandanavia but no one seems to believe that it originated naturally there and then jumped to humans.
Known? No doubt known to the private databases which protect not only their “sources” as membership but also, as a result the products (patented) made from that database. A group known as GISAID—Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data. What is called a “public-private partnership” (look up the definition of that.. heh).
Not just Avian of course— anything shared on this database, which came into it’s own “fame” during... wait for it, H1N1 swine flu, is not available to non-members/non-signees. So it is its own verification “source”.
Anectdotally— off hand would say sure (although if PCR test was used, it would be just a possible a false positive as in humans) it’s in animals, pigs, dogs, cats, monkeys... and clearly in recovered surviving people. For simplicity, testing positive for the S-Protein is enough to reduce the efficacy of any vaccine made from a small clip of the genes for the S-Protein—so, yeah they would be a reservoir very probably for the entire gene sequence of the full virus of the virion.
Understand what you are asking— can tell you that the business-government “partnership’ cannot have this be officially confirmed. Even though “dogs” having covid came up for quite a while until spiked and erased from media.
the “wiki” for now on GISAID:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GISAID#Access_and_intellectual_property