Survey aims to track where long-tailed bats live in Waipā District

A survey to determine how long-tailed bats live alongside people is under way in Cambridge. Photo / Supplied

About 15 volunteers in Cambridge are embarking on a project of vital importance this month to help gather information about a unique, history-making but critically endangered species.

The Waipā District Council has teamed up with the Department of Conservation, local volunteers from Predator Free Cambridge, and ecologist Adam Purcell from Titoki Landcare to undertake acoustic surveys to identify where long-tailed bats, known also as pekapeka, are present throughout the district.

Waipā arborist planner Chris Brockelbank said the survey will help them to better understand how bats lived alongside people.

"We are starting in north and east Cambridge as the pekapeka have previously been recorded there."

Brockelbank said bats lived in urban parts of Waikato such as Cambridge, but little was known about how many there were, where exactly they lived and what they needed to survive.

A long-tailed bat or pekapeka. Photo / Supplied

"We suspect they use trees in urban areas as safe roosts during the time when they are vulnerable, such as when their metabolism slows down in cold weather or when they are raising pups.

"From these safe places, bats use 'highways' such as rivers to travel out into rural areas to feed."

Acoustic surveying would provide information to enable the council to balance growth and development with protecting the habitat that these taonga need to survive and thrive alongside human communities, she said.

Predator Free Cambridge and bat survey community co-ordinator Karen Barlow said volunteers would be installing and later retrieving more than 30 automatic bat monitors (ABM) into trees around council and privately owned land in north and east Cambridge at predetermined sites.

ABMs would be installed and left to record acoustic sounds over weeks before being collected.

"Pekapeka are in Cambridge but they are a mobile and cryptic species," Barlow said.

"Data collected by the monitors will be analysed to determine where bats are present or not present within the survey area."

Volunteers were trained by Purcell at one of the monitoring sites Lake Te Koo Utu.

"Waipā and DoC are fortunate enough that they have a bunch of keen volunteers concerned with species conservation who can help out with this critical work," Barlow said.

The long-tailed bat, which weighs only 8-11 grams, made history last November when it was voted Forest and Bird's New Zealand "Bird of the Year". It has the country's highest threat ranking of "nationally critical" and with its relative, the short-tailed bat, is the only land mammal indigenous to Aotearoa.

"Pekapeka is also important to tangata whenua and knowledge of their former distribution is reflected in some of the place names around Waipā," Brockelbank added.

For more information about pekapeka visit doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/bats-pekapeka/