The bat colony under the bridge at Waugh Drive in Buffalo Bayou Park, a beloved staple of the city, was severely impacted by last week’s winter storm.
While the full extent of the damage is still unknown, many of the Mexican free-tailed bats that usually emerge from under the bridge at dusk were killed by unusually frigid temperatures, according to Buffalo Bayou Park officials.
A small number of surviving bats were taken to a rehabilitation facility to be nursed back to good health, said Trudi Smith, director of programming for Buffalo Bayou Partnership. Officials asked park-goers and dog-owners to stay away from the area for safety reasons and to allow time for clean-up on Monday.
Diana Foss, a wildlife biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and coordinator of the Houston area bat team, examined the colony Monday and was still making assessments of the loss by evening.
[…]
The Waugh Bridge colony was also killed off in droves during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The flood waters submerged the Waugh overpass and the bats couldn’t fly out, drowning many. Residents saved some of them, but tens of thousands were displaced or died during the storm. Before Harvey, there were around 300,000 living in the bridge. After the storm Foss reported seeing around 100,000.
Many of the bats took up shelter in nearby structures, like the America Tower, after Harvey and it wasn’t clear if they would return. But the bats migrated back to their home and repopulated the bridge over time.
See here for the background. This is a small thing, obviously, much less important than the human misery that the freeze brought. We can still feel bummed about the bats without losing sight of the bigger picture.
It was also hard on the fish in Brays Bayou, there were dead fish up and down the bayou.
Well, that sucks. We should all be sad, because of all the mosquitos and other bugs that will go uneaten now that the bats have been decimated. Hopefully those that were saved can repopulate.
I wonder how the bats at the Old Tunnel State Park fared? It was no doubt even colder up in the hill country, and the same kind of Mexican free tail bats are there that are here in Houston.