Mount Bruce, Masterton: Pūkaha National Wildlife Centre has confirmed the existence of New Zealand’s long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) in its forest reserve. The rare bat was picked up on an acoustic recorder setup to record Pūkaha’s wild birds. It’s the first time the bat has ever been recorded at Pūkaha and follows years of anecdotal sightings and suspicions about the bat’s presence.

Five acoustic recorders were deployed at the wildlife centre prior to the Covid-19 Alert Level-4 lockdown. One was setup near a stream and recorded one bat pass. It is believed the stream’s open corridor characteristics, fresh water, and high abundance of insect prey combined to provide an ideal feeding habitat for the bat, which allowed it to be recorded.

Pūkaha spokesman Alex Wall said staff at Pūkaha were elated by the discovery and hoped it would shine the spotlight on one of New Zealand’s most threatened species. “This bat is incredibly rare and at real risk of extinction. Unless there is intervention and fast, its population is forecast to decline by 90% over the next 30 or so years”. Wall went on to add, “the bats are at the highest conservation threat level status of ‘nationally critical’. It does not get much worse. The only level beyond this is ‘extinct’ so this discovery is mega important and has everyone very excited”.

Long-tailed bats live and breed in the cavities of dead and old-aged native trees and are thought to produce only one offspring per year. Wall said the 500-year-old rata trees at Pūkaha can often hollow out and are suspected of providing an ideal home for the bats.

Predation from cats, possums, stoats and rats are an ongoing issue for the viability of the species and Pūkaha like so many reserves around Aotearoa New Zealand invests heavily in targeted predator control to create an environment in which endangered wildlife species can thrive. “The discovery suggests our predator control efforts are making a real difference, allowing these bats to become established”. Wall said the focus would now turn towards understanding more about the bats. “What we now want to know is where was this bat roosting and how big is its population?”

The answers to these questions would take some time to gather and possibly form the focus of future surveys in the spring or summer once the bats were more active and had come out of torpor.

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