Collaborative Bat Monitoring across the Western United States

The National Park Service intends to award a single source justified cooperative agreement to Oregon State University for the project "Collaborative Bat Monitoring across the Western United States". The project aims to monitor at-risk bat populations across the Pacific Northwest and will include tasks such as coordinating and conducting collaborative acoustic bat surveys, managing and disseminating data, and conducting a multi-year conservation assessment of bat populations. The project will be a continuation of work funded by the National Park Service that began in 2015 and will be conducted over a period of 30 months. • The project will involve collaboration between Oregon State University, the National Park Service, and other federal and state partners. • The project will include training National Park Service staff to build operating capacity, processing bat call data files to identify bat species, and making the results of monitoring widely available for land managers and other interested public through peer-reviewed publication. • The project will contribute to proactive management of natural resources and species, mitigating the need for endangered species legal protections and other costly reactive measures.