Bat Project Acoustic Monitoring

Bat Project Acoustic Monitoring is a citizen science project initiated by Texas Nature Trackers to do acoustic monitoring of bats statewide. Each participating chapter has one or more project coordinators to help guide activity within their chapter. The “Bat Project Hours Reporting Guidelines” has been sent to each participating chapter. For more information go to: https://txmn.tamu.edu/tmntuesdays/ and scroll down to the Texas Nature Tracker Mini Series section. Contact Project Lead for questions about getting involved.

2024 Activities – 3 volunteers with 55 hours of service performed

• New project in 2024, initially VH was reported under Texas Parks and Wildlife (+34 VH)
• Placed Song Meter acoustic monitor in 7 different locations for approximately 4 nights per location, April through June 2024. Locations included White Rock Lake, TRAC, Dogwood Canyon, George Bush Library native area along with a few private landowner locations. Over 7000 recordings of bats were picked up at the White Rock Lake location alone! TRAC also had a huge number of recordings. Total number of wav file recordings for all locations was over 22,000. The data is being analyzed by our chapter volunteer data analyst using a special software program that compares the wav files picked up by the recorder against known bat calls for our area. We had a small number of volunteers on the project (4) since we only had one acoustic monitor, but I am hoping the chapter can purchase an additional monitor so that more volunteers can participate in this fun project. Volunteer roles: one project coordinator, one data analyst, two placement volunteers.