(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Natural Resources Commission has approved funding for another year of a program to monitor bats. The D-N-R’s Kelly Poole says the program this summer will monitor bat sounds to track them and inventory their numbers. “Related to white nose syndrome, which is a disease that’s killing thousands of bats,” she says.

She says it is something they have done since 2013.” Iowa State University will be coordinating our community science program to actually collect the data. They’ll be processing the data and they’ll be submitting it to the North American bat monitoring program, which is a requirement of this grant,” Poole says. She says they anticipate using some 35 to 40 volunteers to run routes in the state to track the bats.

“The information is important to us because it’s part of our the D-N-R’S white nose response plan,” Poole says. The volunteers record the noises the bats make that help them navigate in the dark. The contract for the monitoring says the costs are not to exceed 27-thousand dollars.