Injury and Mortality Risks from Wildland Fire Smoke and Heat Exposures for Endangered Indiana Bats (Myotis sodalis) in Maternity Roosts

Burning within the summer range of the endangered Indiana bar may adversely affect the species by injuring or killing individual bats. Accordingly, the USDI -FWS usually requests that federal land managers limit or elinate this activity. Countering the need to protect individual Indiana bats is a the vaule of using both growing and dormant season fires for managing Eastern Misted-oak forest. We proposal to study with the following components. First toxicology modesl of gas and heat effects on bats will be assembled and parameterized with data from the literature. Second characheristic time courses of smoke concentrations and temperatures above surface fires and smoke concentrations in nighttime inversions after fires will be estimated. Third, a field study will be conducted to characterize maternity roosing crevices over the summer rantge of the Indiana bat. Using these date, sutibla roosting crevices will be indentified onthe DBNF and field experiments will be condicuted to enable us to predict smoke exposures for bats within crevices during fires.