Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Forest bats (Chiroptera) are threatened due to the effects of forestry. The primary goal of this literature review was to investigate different forestry practices and analyze their effects on forest bats and to discuss ways to combine forestry and bat conservation. The study includes an overview of the most common forestry practices used in temperate zones in Europe and North America and the impact on the most common bat species living in these areas. The clear-cutting method leaves the forest more uniform and even aged, while selective cutting maintains greater diversity. The shelterwood system includes both aspects. The result showed that different forestry practices can affect bat species differently depending on their preferred foraging behavior. Clear-cutting removes most bat roosting opportunities and creates open areas suitable for bats foraging in open spaces and edge zones. Shelterwood logging leads temporarily to a more diverse forest in terms of age, but there is limited research on how bats respond to this approach over the long term. Thinning is used for increasing the growth rate in forestry production, but it is also a logging practice used in continuity forestry to combine forestry with conservation. The impact on bats varies depending on their foraging strategy. Another forestry practice is drainage which causes fundamental changes to the ecosystem through interference with existing soil conditions, affecting bat access to water sources and insect populations. The edge zones are the transitional areas between ecosystems. They are often high in diversity as the species of the two environments intermix. This review found that each forestry practice had both negative and positive effects on bats depending on the foraging strategy of the bat species. Different forest habitats in a region are often treated as separated units when they are often intertwined, constantly interacting with each other. Combining forestry and bat conservation with a more landscape-focused approach could potentially further benefit the conservation of threatened forest bat populations.