PARSIPPANY — Parsippany’s bats are enjoying a BOOM in the housing market this spring, thanks to dedicated volunteers from the Parsippany Bat Protection Project (PBPP), an initiative of the Parsippany Green Team!
Visitors to Par-Troy’s Volunteer Park, Lake Parsippany Park, Jannarone Park, and Lenni Lenape Park at Knoll Country Club will see new native saplings and/or “bat houses” attached to structures, as part of the PBPP’s habitat creation efforts. The four new bat houses, built as a volunteer project by Parsippany’s Boy Scout Troop 173, are actually nursery boxes for bats, each with enough room to support a maternal colony of up to 300 bats! The houses are painted black to attract sunlight, and the internal structure is grooved to give nursing bats plenty of places to “hang out” with their offspring. Parsippany Township officials supported these bat habitat projects at local parks.
The newly-planted native saplings, six shagbark hickory (carya ovata) trees, are part of the PBPP’s longer-term plan to create bat-friendly habitat. When mature, these trees feature loose plates of bark which are ideal to shelter roosting bats, and which may be more attractive to several of New Jersey’s bat species, those that prefer naturally-occurring tree crevices rather than man-made structures. New Jersey is home to NINE species of bat (6 year-round and 3 migratory) including the endangered Indiana bat.
The bat house plans and tree recommendations were provided to the PBPP by Rutgers University’s Wildlife Conservation and Management Program at wildlife.rutgers.edu. Researchers from Rutgers visited Parsippany to conduct educational programs in 2021, and for 2022 have already scheduled two Bat Walks to be held at Wildlife Preserves’ Troy Meadows in Parsippany. The popular Bat Walk programs offer an entertaining presentation followed by a short walk at dusk, where participants use a special bat acoustic device that can identify the species flying overhead in real-time.
Bats are one of the most misunderstood, yet important species on our planet. They perform an invaluable ecological function by eating up to 3,000 insects per bat per night. This dramatically reduces the need for pesticides and produces an estimated value to the country’s agricultural industry of over $22 billion per year!
Unfortunately, numerous bat species may face extinction, due to the deadly White-nose Syndrome fungus which has killed millions of these vulnerable creatures.
The Parsippany Bat Protection Project, as an initiative of the Parsippany Green Team, aims to educate residents and business owners about the importance of bats in the ecosystem, provide local bats with suitable habitat, and humanely reduce conflicts between bats and people. The Project enjoys the support of our local officials and the Township of Parsippany and a broad-based coalition of residents, educators, and nonprofit groups.
To learn more about the Parsippany Bat Protection Project, and how YOU can help Parsippany’s bats by hanging a bat house or planting native vegetation, please visit the following links:
Parsippany Bat Protection Project – Click here
Parsippany Green Team – Click here
Rutgers Wildlife & Conservation Management – Click here
NJ Native Plant Society – Click here
