Silk Hope, NC – The Chatham County Center of North Carolina Cooperative Extension will offer a workshop on Protecting and Enhancing Bat Populations to Help with Pest Control on the Farm from 7:00-9:30 pm on Monday August 3 at the Silk Hope Farm Heritage Center in Silk Hope, NC. The workshop will be taught by UNC-Greensboro biologist and bat expert Dr. Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell.
This will be a kid-friendly workshop so children ages 7 and up are encouraged to attend!
There are approximately 11 species of bats in the piedmont region of North Carolina and all of them eat insects, including mosquitoes and many important agricultural pests like corn earworms, stink bugs, cucumber beetles, planthoppers, and much more. Pest-control services provided by insect-eating bats in the United States likely save the U.S. agricultural industry at least $3 billion a year, and this is a conservative estimate. A large colony of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) can eat 18 million corn rootworms each summer, while a single evening bat (Nycticeius humeralis) can consume over 20,000 insects annually.
AGENDA:
Bats in your Backyard: Biology, Ecology, and Relevance to Farmers and Agriculture
* Bats as fascinating mammals
* Resources that bats need for survival
* Bats as insect consumers in piedmont food webs
* Specific species on piedmont farms
* Ways to attract bats to your farm or garden
* Threats to piedmont bats
* What you can do for bat conservation
Q&A Session
On-Site Bat Observation Session with Bat Detectors
For a speaker bio and registration information, visit Cooperative Extension’s Growing Small Farms website at http://go.ncsu.edu/bat-
Advance registration is required by July 29.