Arizona's Bat-Tastic!

Summer bat programs at the Arboretum give local bats some much-needed PR.

Once a month, by the full moon, people gather at the Flagstaff Arboretum. There's nothing creepy going on here though, just a bunch of folks curious about the mysterious critters that live right under our noses (or over our heads, more likely) but that we rarely ever see, know little about, and what we think we know we've often just made up.

That's why Brian Keeley, the Arboretum's gardens and facilities director, began the popular monthly "full moon" workshops on bats. He wants to dispel some of the myths and share the true amazing facts about these night-flyers.

Arizona is a bat-rich state. How rich? Of the 45 species of bats that live in the United States, no less than 28 call Arizona home. They're literally everywhere, from the saguaro-studded deserts to the Grand Canyon, napping in urban attics and flickering through remote mountain forests. Arizona's diversity of habitat is part of what makes it so attractive to so many different kinds of bats, and for that matter, to a bat expert like Keeley, who spent several years working for Bat Conservation International before joining the Arboretum.

The first two "full moon" sessions—a workshop on building bat houses and a survey of Arizona's different bat species—packed the house at the Arboretum and required staff to move the events to a different location to accommodate the enthusiastic guests. Keeley believes that a big part of the program's appeal is the mysterious nature of the bat itself. "They're nocturnal, so we rarely get to see them, and there's a lot of mythical information out there that's not based in science at all, so they've become shrouded in mystery," he says.

During the programs, Keeley often finds himself dispelling myths like the one about bats getting tangled in people's hair and laying eggs Once the misinformation is out of the way, guests are most taken by the critical role bats play maintaining balance in the habitat we all share. For instance, most Arizona bats are insectivores, and can save foresters and farmers millions of dollars annually by eating crop pests. Multiply that by a couple thousand bats in a given area and you have a significant impact on crop protection and human health.