Going to bat for bats

By DANIEL PERSON Chronicle Staff Writer

Bats can be things of nightmares, transforming into a vampire at any moment, but not for five Hawthorne Elementary fourth-graders. For them, bats are objects of compassion.

The students braved Tuesday's blustery weather to sell baked goods and raise money to adopt a bat from a Michigan organization that specializes in rehabilitating injured and abandoned bats.

One of the students, Henry Pertzborn, said the effort was about conservation.

“We wanted to save (the bats) so they didn't go extinct,” he said after the bake sale, which was held outside the school during lunch and after class.

The adoption is a symbolic one; the students will likely never meet the bat whose recovery they help fund.

But teacher Sue Winstead said the project is as much about learning how to serve the community as learning about bats.

The students, after all, already have learned plenty about these nocturnal friends, she said.

The idea to adopt a bat began with a field trip to the Museum of the Rockies, where curators have a special exhibit on bats. The students took a keen liking to the bats, and afterward prepared reports on various species of the flying mammal. Then, a Google search unveiled the Organization for Bat Conservation's Web site and the opportunity to donate money to help a bat's recovery.

Dawn Vezina, education specialist for the organization, said the organization is caring for 147 bats, a number that swings wildly depending on the demand for care.

Most of them come from zoos that cannot care for injured bats or have closed their bat exhibits, she said. Some come from nature, bats that are injured, abandoned or do not get along with their colony.

Currently, about 200 schools sponsor a bat, most of them in Michigan, Vezina said.

Along with providing care for the animals, Vezina's organization seeks to educate the public about bats to combat their declining numbers.

Bats, Vezina said, are “misunderstood.”

“People are curious why this organization is here,” thinking that other animals are more worthy of attention, she said.

A major cause of this is that bats are nocturnal, she said.

“Even though we live with bats, we rarely get to see them,” she said.

The major causes of bat population decline are loss of habitat, use of pesticides that decrease and poison bats' food supply and “persecution by humans,” Vezina said.

However, bats can be quite beneficial to a community, not least because they cut down on mosquito populations, she said.

Montana has 15 species of bats, seven of which are considered common by ornithologists, Vezina said.

Through the bat-adoption program, seven different species of bat can be adopted.

Pertzborn said the bake sale raised around $120, giving the students sponsoring-power to adopt one of the more exotic and expensive species.

They can sponsor a Golden Fruit Bat for $100, an Egyptian Fruit Bat for $45, or a few nightmarishly named vampire bats for $35 each.

But, Pertzborn said, they haven't decided yet.

Daniel Person can be reached at dperson@dailychronicle.com or 582-2665.

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