Bat Conservation on Vancouver Island: The importance of wetlands, protected areas and forest cover.

In collaboration with Nature Nanaimo, NALT is very happy to present Bat Conservation on Vancouver Island: the Importance of Wetlands, Protected Areas and Forest Cover, a talk by Scott Wilson, a Research Scientists With Environment and Climate Change Canada. This free presentation is on Thursday, February 20th at 7 pm at the Beban Park Social Centre, Room 2.

This presentation will start with an overview of the importance of bats and the threats they face and then discuss the results of a three-year study of bat occurrence and ecology on east Vancouver Island conducted in collaboration with NALT. This study addressed several topics that will be discussed in the presentation including the relative abundance of species in the study region, how bat activity differs among local habitats such as wetlands and meadows, whether activity is higher in protected areas and how much forest cover they prefer in the surrounding landscape.

Scott Wilson is a Research Scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada and Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the ecology and conservation of species at risk with an emphasis on bats and Neotropical migratory birds. His work on these topics includes studies in coastal British Columbia, prairie Canada, Colombia and Mexico.