Cheyenne Stirling is the "bat woman" of Glacier National Park

By Evelyn Boswell 

BOZEMAN – Some people go to Glacier National Park for the grizzly bears and mountain goats. Cheyenne Stirling is there for the bats.

Already called “bat woman” by her roommates, Montana State University’s first recipient of a Jerry O’Neal National Park Service Student Fellowship is inspecting hundreds of buildings at Glacier this summer for signs of bats. The signs could range from an actual bat, to feces, to an opening that looks like it would appeal to a roosting bat. The buildings could be anything from an outhouse to St. Mary Lodge.

Discovering where bats roost -- or might roost -- will help the park prepare for the possible arrival of white-nose syndrome (WNS), said Stirling, an MSU senior in the College of Letters and Science from Shelby. White-nose syndrome produces a powdery white fungus on the nose and wings of bats. It has killed more than 5.7 million bats so far in North America, leading to uneaten insects that threaten crops.

“If we know where bats are roosting or potentially going to be, if the white-nose syndrome comes closer to Glacier, we can have this documented already,” Stirling said. “We can go straight to the biggest roost areas.”

Lisa Bate, a wildlife biologist in Glacier National Park, said white-nose syndrome is caused by a cold-loving fungus that spreads between bats that are hibernating in close quarters. The disease came to the United States from Europe and has been spreading west. The closest cases to Montana have been reported in Minnesota and Oklahoma.

The extreme climate in Glacier loosens shingles and siding, creating perfect conditions for bats to tunnel into buildings, Bate said. In fact, she added, “A lot of our historic buildings function as very large bat houses.”

Bate said she doesn’t know yet if bats are hibernating in the park’s caves, but she is continuing to inventory them. Surveys so far show that Glacier has nine bat species, with three of those new to the park.

Bate, who is supervising Stirling this summer, said she was delighted that Stirling received the fellowship to join her.

“She’s awesome,” Bate said. “I’m thrilled to have her here.”

Bate added that the park didn’t have money to pay someone to do what Stirling is doing.

“The work would not be getting done without Cheyenne,” Bate said. “It’s a win-win for biology and for facilities management here.”

Stirling’s work will not only provide baseline information about bats in Glacier, but it will help the managers of park facilities, Bate explained. Before a building is remodeled, re-roofed or reshingled, it must be inspected. Inventorying bats is part of that process. In addition to finding the bats, Stirling also collects information about the characteristics of the buildings so researchers can better understand the kinds of places where bats prefer to roost.

Stirling started her fieldwork in June by inspecting the attics and outsides of larger buildings clustered on the west side of Glacier. As the summer progresses, she will head east through the park. If she has time, she will move to the backcountry. Glacier contains approximately 900 structures and owns 700 of them. Stirling is focusing on the Glacier-owned buildings.

When she returns to MSU in the fall, she will compile and analyze her data, Stirling said. She will also prepare a presentation of her findings for The Wildlife Society meeting in February. She will graduate in December with a degree in fish and wildlife management and a minor in environmental horticulture. After that, she’s thinking of a career in research, perhaps in Alaska.

“I would really like to continue in the field of researching bats, because I think it’s really interesting,” Stirling said.

MSU ecologist Andrea Litt – who recommended Stirling for the fellowship and will mentor her as she analyzes her information and prepares her findings -- said she was excited to see her student exposed to smaller mammals, moving from studying “charismatic megafauna” to “charismatic micro-fauna.” Litt, herself, researches a variety of animals, including marmots and leopard frogs. Before working on bats, Stirling collected information about bighorn sheep as a work study student with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Bozeman.

Stirling said she has come to enjoy bats. In her first week of fieldwork alone, she had seen four kinds of bats and helped net bats for Bate’s work.

Excited when she learned she had won the fellowship, Stirling said she had applied for it during spring break. She had been bouldering in Utah, but took a day off and found Internet access so she could work with Bate on her application.

“That speaks of her determination,” Bate said.

The Jerry O’Neal National Park Service Student Fellowship is named for the former deputy superintendent at Glacier National Park, in honor of his dedication to science and research in the National Park Service. The fellowship began in 2007 and supports work in Glacier, Grant-Kohrs Ranch or the Little Bighorn Battlefield. Eligible students come from any of the universities in the Rocky Mountains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU).