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About 17,000 years ago, bats discovered these caves. A perfectly embalmed bat encased in a stalagmite over 100 years ago underscores the long relationship of bats and carlsbad. Ch evening from spring until fall, several hundred thousand take flight, rising in columns, then evaporating into the twilight skies. When the mexican freetails turn at dawn, they may have eaten 100 of their body weight in insects. Thats a half a Million Pounds of bugs. The visual display is amazing, but imagine what it must have been like earlier in this century when the carlsbad colony numbered nearly 9 million. Today, the caverns shelter less than onehalf million, since ancient times, bats have been portrayed in a negative manner. Throughout the centuries, artists portrayed bats as satanic, supernatural creatures. In fact, lucifer himself regularly appeared wearing bat wings. Medieval christians often characterized earlyday spiritualists as devil worship ....
But, hundreds of thousands of birds and nearly 1 million bats die every year in collisions with wind turbines throughout the United States and Canada. As scientists look for ways to mitigate the effects of climate change, clean energy producers need to keep wildlife populations and their habitats in mind, experts say. “More than half of the (bat) species in the U.S. are either declining or at some risk of decline,” said Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International. “Wind energy is the leading cause of mortality for our long-distance migratory species. And that mortality rate is worryingly high.” ....
Terry Husted lives in DeWitt County, a major pathway for migrating birds in central Illinois. After a company submitted plans to construct a wind farm in his area, Husted said ....
As white-nose syndrome continues to decimate bat populations, a Pennsylvania nonprofit is working to help bats recover from a variety of ailments and thrive. ....