Endangered long-tailed bats have been sighted feeding by a
street lamp in a residential area of Te Anau, the Department
of Conservation says.
Doc hoped to catch some of the bats and attach transmitters
so they could be tracked back to their roosting site,
biodiversity manager Hannah Edmonds said.
"We suspect these bats are roosting in the Kepler Mountains.
"We would like to confirm this."
The monitoring work would be funded through the Real Journeys
Pekapeka/Bat sponsorship and carried out during the next few
weeks while it was warm and the juveniles were flying around.
Once rangers located the roost, which could house up to 100
bats, predator protection could be put in place.
In the past, it was thought rats had killed an entire family
of bats, she said.
The recent sightings could be the result of the Kepler
Challenge Bird Song Project which established a trap line
around the length of the track to protect native birds from
predation.
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