Kentucky built an inspiring piece of infrastructure: a bridge designed to protect endangered species such as the gray bat! The amazing bridge is the result of collaboration between wildlife groups and scientists with local engineers, and is the first of its kind in the state. Yet gray bats live in other states besides Kentucky, including states without such beautiful, accommodating architecture.
Sign now to tell Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency: protect our bats! Invest in bat-friendly bridges now!
Apparently, gray bats use the expanded spaces and cracks that classic parallel box bridges develop with age as makeshift caves, seeking shelter there from wind, rain, and predators. Kentucky's new bridge design simply includes these spaces from the get go, welcoming bats to use them! This is wonderful, because these little critters need all the protection they can get. Like a growing number of species in the United States, gray bats suffer from climate-change and deforestation-induced habitat loss, habitat degradation, the commercialization of wild spaces like caves, and general human interference.
Gray bat populations are especially vulnerable, though -- with large populations living in just a few caves, they are easily affected by outside disturbance.
The gray bat has been on the endangered species list for nearly 50 years, and little progress has been made. We must work towards reviving gray bat populations to healthy levels again. Simple changes to bridges like this could improve bat populations dramatically! Kentucky has given us the blueprint to use, and Tennessee should follow suit.
We need more collaboration between engineers and wildlife scientists to produce safer habitats for endangered species like the Gray Bat across the country. In an era of climate change, and with fears of a sixth mass extinction event on the horizon, we must tell the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency: follow Kentucky's lead! Sign the petition asking that the state build bridges with bat-friendly infrastructure and save gray bats from extinction!