The New England Field Office and its project partners, Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit -- University of Vermont, New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, are conducting a two-year study of Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis) roosting and foraging habitat in the Lake Champlain Valley. The study is funded in part as a Science Support Program project. The partners used the Science Support Program funding to purchase equipment that was used on this project and other bat surveys in the region. For example, the equipment was used in October of 2003 by the New England Field Office and the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department to determine that a mine proposed to be sealed is actually a bat hibernaculum.

As a result of the findings, an alternative to sealing the mine mouth will be used to prevent dangerous human ingress, but which will allow the continued use of the mine as a bat hibernaculum.

NORTHEAST REGION, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE -- Conserving the Nature of the Northeast