April showers bring May flowers… and mosquitoes. To reduce skeeter populations install Bat Boxes.
Bats are amazing:
- Eat thousands of insects each night – especially mosquitoes
- Provide $3.8B value of insect control to US agriculture
- Nocturnal pollinators
- Love tequila? Thank a bat
- Add fertile guano to the compost
Bats face significant problems:
- 52% of North America’s bat population is endangered
- Insect Apocalypse
- White Nose Syndrome
- Climate Change
- Pesticides, herbicides
- Land development-forest fragmentation
- Bat populations grow very slowly, usually one pup a year
- Mimic roosting/nesting sites under tree bark, without predation
- Southeast-facing boxes on a sunny pole or outbuilding keep them warm
- Build your own
- Do NOT be mounted on a tree—easy predation
- Face boxes SouthEAST for morning sun and to warm up after a chilly night.
Create a safe place for a bat family; your garden will love you, the mosquitoes not so much.
Planetarily,
Laura & Gil
Our friends Laura & Gil Richardson are, in their own words, “imperfect” but they are much further down this Planetarian path than anyone I know. They are a treasure trove of sustainable living inspiration and we’ve asked them to share one simple swap per week that they’ve made (and the products they love) in hopes it might inspire you to make them, too.
