Upstate NY bump
Sounds stupid anyway, how much impact could a canal project put on a flying mammal.
... although spending the 5k might be worth the investment if it helps avoid $5,000,000 in legal fights
Finally - some politicians beginning to think! They shut down the idiot who claimed it wasn't their money but the govt grant.
Maybe people are finally figuring out that the FEDERAL GOVT - come to think of it NO GOVT - creates wealth - it can only steal it!
Indiana bats hibernate in caves in huge colonies often in the thousands in a colony.
I suspect that the fear in this case is that the trail will go by a cave entrance and lead more people to the area that will explore the cave in the nearly 6 months of the year that it could be dangerous for the bats to be woken up if hibernating.
If people go into the cave while the bats are hibernating the bats will wake up. They wake slowly, so they may not wake up until well after the people have left.
If they are woken too many times while there are no inscects for them to feed on they will die.
Because this species has it's numbers clustered in a number of large colonies, waking up a colony can kill a considerable percentage of the remaing bats.
The people who do the study looking for bats can't just walk down the trail. They are going to have to look for caves, and a large cave that is miles long can have a very small entrance that you won't see without looking very carefully.
Once they find the caves, they'll need to explore, looking for signs of Indiana bats, while being careful to disturb them as little as possible.
Exploring caves isn't a quick or easy process, and bats can fly down small passages with ease. One cave I've been to that is an Indiana Bat hibernation site has a 1400 foot crawlway near the entrance where you're crawling on your belly for about 1/3 of that distance. After the crawlway the cave opens up into very large passageway.
They might be able to find some cavers in the area that are willing to help look for caves with the bats as volunteers. If they find some, they can likely install a bat friendly cave gate and having the trail near the cave wouldn't be a big issue, but those tend to be expensive to install.
Since someone is likely to ask. No, I am not an environmental wacko. If I were I wouldn't be going into caves, I'd be one of the people that goes around looking for caves to put gates to keep everyone out all the time.
I enjoy visiting caves. I just try to limit the impace of doing so.
Hopefully, they can work out a way to do the environmental study less expensively and if there are Indiana bats in the area, figure out a way to keep them from being disturbed.
It's not like the bats will be disturbed by people walking on the trail. As long as people stay out of the cave and the trail doesn't have people walking right by the entrance of the cave too often, I doubt the bats will be bothered at all.