Despite its urban landscape, Hudson County is home to an estimated one million bats. The Palisade cliffs provide a place for them to roost, and they feed on the varied insects that live along the Hudson River.
“They’re the most important natural pest control,” said Joseph D’Angeli, a local expert known as “New Jersey’s bat man,” last week.
“They eat 500 to 1,000 mosquitoes in one hour.”
Bill Sheehan of Secaucus, who leads the local non-profit environmental group Hackensack Riverkeeper, has been trying to help the local flying creatures.
“I seem them around sunset,” said Sheehan last week. “We’ve been trying to encourage them by putting up bat boxes.”
The “bat boxes,” or bat houses, give the species a protected place to roost, hibernate, and maintain maternity colonies. Bats give live birth to only one “pup” a year, so their maternity colonies are protected in the state of New Jersey.
Bats at sunset…and in a Jersey City house
D’Angeli, who lives in Little Ferry but whose father used to own a Guttenberg restaurant, is a chiroptologist, or bat biologist. He has worked with the Garden State’s bats since 1991.
Not only does he frequently travel with his bats to schools and museums for lectures on the misperceived animal, but he is opening his bat museum to the public in Ridgefield Park on Halloween.
He said that while state and federal protection may have increased bat populations, their residence in Hudson County is nothing new.
And some have found that out the hard way.
In 1998, the family of Jersey City resident Sonya Spann was shocked to learn that bats were living in their home.
Spann said that during a year in which her father began restoration on their home, he finally ventured into the attic.
Spann’s father found four bats that had taken of residency in the attic, which had been closed off for the previous three years.
“Having grown up in Jersey City most of my life, you can imagine the shock to hear that bats lived anywhere other than in a cave, let alone that they were in my attic,” said Spann last week. “Realizing that he was not equipped to handle them, my dad called the exterminator.”
Brown bats
But exterminators don’t actually kill the bats.
Bats are a protected species in New Jersey, and in this state, the Indiana bat is on the federal endangered list.
Kirt Lapierre of the Jersey City-based company Saver-NGM Bird and Wildlife Solutions said that for this reason, bats are never “exterminated,” but instead removed from the premises.
Lapierre said that homeowners usually see bat droppings, or the bats themselves.
The bats are removed by a tube that lets them leave, but not return.
Saver-NGM is one of the few companies in New Jersey licensed for bat removal, and works in conjunction with Jersey City Animal Control or any other city’s animal control department.
“It has to be done at a certain period of time during the year, because they have maternity colonies during the summer months,” said Lapierre last week. “We won’t exclude them unless it’s a hazard to health.”
The two species that Saver-NGM sees most are the little and big brown bat, whose main differences are not in size, but in behavior.
“The little brown bat goes back to caves in Pennsylvania and hibernates,” he said, “and the big brown bat will stay in the structure they’re in and find a warm spot.”
Bats also live in colonies. Lapierre said that while the big brown bat can live in colonies composed of 20-50 members, the little brown can be in the 100s.
Unlawful to exterminate bats
D’Angeli’s first experience with bats occurred in Guttenberg with his father, which spurred years of research.
His father was a resturuant owner who used to take him out at night to watch the bats.
“He kept me out of trouble by watching bats,” said D’Angeli last Monday.
He said that when he started studying biology, no one was studying bats. When he began researching the species, the nickname of “New Jersey’s batman” was quickly garnered.
D’Angeli said that he estimates six to 10 species are migrating through the Hudson County area at any given time. The unusually warm weather has also raised the likelihood of bat sightings.
Bats normally do not bite humans unprovoked, and less than 1 percent of them carry rabies, said Lapierre. Lapierre said that unlikely for rabies to be transferred from bat to human.
“People pick them up because they think they are sick, but they’ve been shunned from the rest of the colony,” said Lapierre.
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