CHECK-OUT TIME FOR BATS
Last Call to Remove Bats Before End of Season

It’s check-out time again for bats. Bats in the Cayman Islands can only be moved out of buildings safely until mid-May when baby bat pups are born. For help removing bats permanently and humanely, call the Bat Conservation Program at 916-6784, the Wildlife Hotline at 917-BIRD, the National Trust at 749-1121 or contact us. Bats not out before the deadline cannot be properly removed until November.

To find out if there are bats in your building, go outside at dusk, just after sunset, but while the sky is still light, and watch. If you see bats emerging, do not plug the hole. Plugging holes can trap bats inside, forcing them into your living areas. Bats can be sealed out (not in!) using simple methods and volunteers are available to advise and/or recommend qualified professionals to assist.

Bats give birth to only one pup per year. Bat-pups cannot fly for several months and remain in the roost while their mothers go out to catch insects. For this reason, exclusions are not done during the summer when these flightless young are present. Often people don’t realize that they have bats in the roof until summer when they hear the young ones squeaking as the mothers return to nurse them in the quiet pre-dawn hours. To avoid the long waiting period, the Bat Conservation Program is hoping to reach everyone with this message in time so that bats can be moved before the mid-May deadline.

“Bats are harmless. Each one eats up to 2,000 mosquitoes and other insects, including crop and garden pests, every night. But, they should still be moved out of roofs to avoid odour problems. We want to help get bats out of houses and calm fears.” stated Lois Blumenthal, Coordinator of the Caribbean Bat Conservation Project for Bat Conservation International (www.batcon.org ) and Director of the Bat Conservation Program for the National Trust, “Our goal is for all bats to live in bat houses and no more bats in roofs.”

With the cooperation of Caribbean Utilities Co Ltd (CUC), Ron Moser’s Machine Shop and extensive volunteer labour, there are over 80 bat houses in all districts of Grand Cayman. They provide alternative habitat to help to keep bats from moving into roofs. Bat houses are a great success but bats won’t move out of roofs without an exclusion.

Bats are part of the balance of nature and helpful to humans in many ways, notably, the control of insects but they are also important pollinators and seed dispersers. Bats living in roofs in the Cayman Islands are always insect-eating species. Fruit bats have never been found in roofs here and do not use bat houses. Bat houses can only provide habitat for three of the Cayman Islands’ nine species. The other bat species need forest and cave habitat to survive.

For free information, a map of Cayman Islands bat house locations, photos of local bats, or to download an educational slide show about the Cayman Islands Bat Project, go the “Bats” page on this site.