A few years ago, David Bilyeu learned at a Dominion Energy safety meeting that several species of bats, such as the northern long-eared and tricolored bats, are declining in Hampton Roads.
The utility also realized that the rights of way where it puts its distribution equipment often create a sort of transitional habitat space preferred by many animals, including bats. Dominion saw some of the creatures already roosting on power poles, which resemble trees.
“We knew we had to do something within that zone,” said Bilyeu, a design specialist with Dominion. “Knowing that there’s also poles in these areas, we figured why not make them viable habitat?”
Enter the “Bat Flat.”
Bilyeu and others at Dominion designed the simple, 3D-printed device, where bats can crawl inside and sleep during the day, hidden from predators.
The mailbox-looking homes have a narrow opening and are concave to easily add to poles without preventing workers from scaling up to access power infrastructure, he said.
Dominion has put up 13 bat flats at a pilot site near its nuclear plant in Surry. A patent is pending.
The company also called in a team from Christopher Newport University to study the effort.
“As long as the science proves that they are, in fact, a viable product, we will try to expand those in our rights of way within urban developments to increase the biodiversity in those areas,” Bilyeu said.
Dominion provided $10,000 to help cover logistics, gas costs and a semester’s worth of tuition for a graduate student for the project.
CNU biology professor Rick Sherwin said they’ve observed 13 bat species in Hampton Roads, but they’ve generally been understudied in the urban environment.
“Scientists and ecologists tend to be less interested in places where the humans are,” he said. “With this project, we're just starting to understand the year-round patterns of activity of species in this area.”
Historically, many bats hibernate in the mountains of Virginia to shut down for winter, Sherwin said. But they’ve noticed more of the animals staying in Hampton Roads.
Bats help control insect populations and pollinate plants.
Endangered species, such as the northern long-eared bat, are particularly threatened by a fungal condition called white-nose syndrome.
When the creatures become infected, they wake up and start to groom to get rid of the irritant, burning too many calories when they should be hibernating. They eventually starve to death, Sherwin said.
Habitat loss is another major threat.
Bats like to roost in compacted spaces, such as underneath peeling bark on trees.
Virginia traditionally had forests including dead and decaying trees with hollow spaces, Sherwin said. But urban expansion and logging have reduced that habitat and sent bats into spaces such as abandoned buildings, under bridges – and people’s attics.
Sherwin hopes the bat flat concept helps distribute the population more widely across the landscape, making them less vulnerable to disease.
Putting habitat on power poles “could maybe start to replicate their historical patterns of distribution more than we have now, where a lot of them may be concentrated in the remaining stands of forest.”
His team uses acoustic monitoring boxes on the poles to identify the species of bats. That data is paired with thermal imaging cameras to capture the number of bats.
Eventually, Sherwin said he’d like to see bat flats become part of Dominion’s regular process for power poles.
“Sometimes conservation feels like a zero-sum game: Either people have it or we set it aside for the animals and the plants,” he said. “But in this case, nobody loses. We don't have to take anything from anybody. We can reconcile these places that we have and make them more functional ecologically.”
It may take time for bats to adjust to these plastic homes, he said. But the team saw a good sign in Surry this week: bat poop, or guano, at the base of one of the poles.
