Thank you! Over $13,000 raised for the Angela Rehhorn Community Science Fund thanks to Roland Rehhorn and Joan Vincent, Brewery Bay Food Co, silent auction donors and winners, and everyone who came out for a Night out for Nature!
The Angela Rehhorn Community Science Fund helps power our Community Science efforts. We have 10 different programs and almost 200 volunteers who are trained on identification, monitoring protocols, reporting and more.
One example of a program is Bat Monitoring. This year there were:
Thank you! Over $13,000 raised for the Angela Rehhorn Community Science Fund thanks to Roland Rehhorn & Joan Vincent, Brewery Bay Food Co, silent auction donors & winners, & everyone who came out for a Night out for Nature!
The Angela Rehhorn Community Science Fund helps power our Community Science efforts. We have 10 different programs & almost 200 volunteers who are trained on identification, monitoring protocols, reporting & more.
One example of a program is Bat Monitoring. Here are some key stats & info:
🦇 there are eight species of bats in our region, 4 of which are endangered;
😎 23 volunteers;
📍 13 sites monitored, with three visits per site between June & July. They visit half an hour after sunset, & go for between 30 minutes to one hour;
📒39 monitoring reports;
🗓 We use an echometer & Wildlife Acoustics software (kind of like the bird song app Merlin, but for bats);
➡️ Some people do transects (meaning they walk & record at the same time), some do stations (stay in one place & record for 10 minutes, & then go to the next station). This depends on the site they are monitoring.
❓ Why is bat monitoring important, and why should be protect bats?
There is very litte information about bats because we cannot hear them, they are hard to see and hard to count. The information collected from our monitoring efforts contributes to broader monitoring efforts and other environmental databases. Bats matter for many reasons – one of them being pest control. Bats eat insects that can be damaging to food production. Many of our bat species are endangered species because of white nose syndrome, insect population decline and habitat loss.
The money raised from this event helps us power staff to coordinate volunteers, allows us to buy the equipment needed, submit Species at Risk observations to the Natural Heritage Information Centre and *much* more.
Thank you to silent auction donors: Brewery Bay Food Co, Garmin, Mariposa Folk Foundation, Prodomax Automation, Hawk Ridge Golf Club, Leopold Optics, Hearo, Grey Owl Paddles, Ontario Parks, Craig Barrett, Panacea, Anonymous donor, Creative Nomad Studios, Shirley Vick & Jane Sloley.
