Read the full story from the University of Illinois.
Ever thought about buying or building a bat box to help bats? Think carefully about the design and where you put it, University of Illinois researchers say.
Here’s why: Bats and their pups can overheat and die in poorly designed or placed bat boxes, and in a warming climate, it could happen more often.
Illinois bat ecologists Joy O’Keefe and Reed Crawford recently synthesized the available data on bat boxes, also known as bat houses or artificial roosts, to raise awareness of the issue and motivate change in bat box design, marketing, and consumer education. Their recommendations are published in Conservation Science and Practice.
