Keeley, Brian, 1995. We are well on our way toward finding the answer. Some of the overall characteristics we are looking at include bridge location, surrounding land use, availability of water, and bridge temperatures, while details involve the depth, width, and length of roost crevices within each bridge surveyed. Once all of these data are analyzed, we hope to have a master model that ultimately could enable us to predict where special bat friendly bridges would be most beneficial to both bats and humans. Such a model has the potential to be extremely useful to state and federal agencies that are already interested in providing artificial bat habitats, and the concept is sparking some international interest as well.
Agricultural application is an especially exciting possibility.
Imagine the value to the crops of an organic farmer if this bridge were nearby. At no extra cost to taxpayers, such bridges could prove very helpful in solving agricultural pest problems. The study is already attracting wide attention from conservationists and other researchers. Future efforts will also focus on gathering information on total numbers of bats using bridges within the primary study area in Central Texas and later estimating the numbers of bats using bridges over wider areas. Experimentation has been initiated with the Texas Department of Transportation in retrofitting some existing bridges with a specially designed device called the Texas Bat-Abode, an experimental roost crevice that can be used at reasonable cost to expand or add bat roosts in existing bridges.