Bat’s Threatened Listing Will Bring Changes To PA Timber Industry

By Andrew Staub | PA Independent

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday it will list the northern long-eared bat as threatened and install new protections for the mammal, a move that’s getting mixed reactions from the timber industry.

The service said it’s trying to protect the bat, whose population has been decimated by the fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome, while avoiding unnecessary regulations for landowners and others within the animal’s 37-state range.

That doesn’t mean change isn’t coming to the Keystone State once an interim rule that accompanies the listing goes into effect May 4. Pennsylvania sits within the white-nosed syndrome buffer zone, meaning the bat will have more protection here than in places yet to be affected by the disease.

Timber, oil, mining and other industry groups here have been on alert since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2013 proposed an endangered listing for the bat after severe population drops, but the executive director of the Pennsylvania Forest Products Association said the outcome is better than what has been on the table.

“The option we were facing, we weren’t going to be allowed to cut any trees from April until the first of December,” Paul Lyskava said, “and it’s pretty tough to run an industry on four months a year.”

The interim rule exempts “take” — or the harming, harassing or killing of a listed species — within areas affected by white-nose syndrome during forest management activities, such as timber harvest and prescribed burning. It also exempts take from the maintenance and limited expansion of transportation and utility rights-of-way, prairie habitat management, limited tree removal projects and the removal of hazardous trees.

Those activities must occur more than a quarter of a mile from known hibernation spots. Loggers must also avoid cutting, destroying or clearcutting known, occupied roost trees from June 1 through July 31, the bat’s pupping season. The rule will protect bats when they are at their most vulnerable, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.

“Bats are a critical component of our nation’s ecology and economy, maintaining a fragile insect predator-prey balance; we lose them at our peril,” Service Director Dan Ashe said in a statement.

Not everybody was happy with the decision.

While the American Forest and Paper Association said a threatened listing was “preferable” to the service’s original proposal, it still argued the move would “hinder forest management activities that provide habitat for the animal rather than address and find treatment for the acknowledged threat to the species: white-nose syndrome.”

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, the Utah Republican who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources, had sharper words for the service.

“This decision flouts transparency and will fail to mitigate the real menace to this species, which is a disease called white-nose syndrome — not human activities,” Bishop said. “If success here is defined by controlling more of people’s land and more people’s lives, then they have succeeded.”

Some environmentalists weren’t pleased either. They’ve countered that with the bat in such a fragile position, everything possible should be done to protect it. That means an endangered listing is best, they argue.

Mollie Matteson, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said she was “troubled” by the decision and fears the federal government will only expand the exceptions for the taking of the bat in the future.

“Just to put it bluntly, we’re not doing everything we possibly can to protect this species from extinction,” Matteson said, arguing that some lawmakers are trying to undermine the Endangered Species Act and give it a “death by a thousand cuts.”

“I think people need to be aware it’s not just about this species,” she said. “It’s about an assault on all our wildlife that needs help from us.”