10/29/2026
It's still Bat Week, and Peace Ridge Sanctuary is still celebrating our flying mammal friends!
Did you know bats don't just protect our crops. They may protect our children, too.
When white-nose syndrome swept through bat populations, a 2024 study published in Science found something startling. In counties where bats declined, farmers increased their insecticide use by 31%, and infant mortality rose by nearly 8%. Across the 245 counties affected between 2006 and 2017, that added up to an estimated 1,334 additional human infant deaths (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adg0344).
Why? Bats are nature's pest control. Insect-eating bats in the U.S. are estimated to save agriculture anywhere from $3.7 billion to $53 billion a year by consuming insects who harm our fields (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1201366). When bats disappear, more chemicals take their place, and those chemicals reach our water, our communities, and our families.
Here in Maine, all eight of our bat species are of conservation concern, and white-nose syndrome has devastated little brown bats, northern long-eared bats, and others.
Protecting bats means protecting all of us. This Bat Week:
�🦇 Leave roosting bats undisturbed
�🦇 Never exclude bats from June through August, when pups could be trapped inside
�🦇 Put up a quality bat house
�🦇 Skip the pesticides
Our lives are more connected to bats than most of us ever realized.
