UF Bat House Homepage
Bad Press for UF Bats: 04/06/2005
The unfortunate story here will give a bad name to UF bats. The
unfortunate thing is that if people would be more careful with wild
animals who are injured/sick, then this would not have happened. Another
thing to note is that rabies in bats most often is the kind that does not
make them seek to harm others (it paralyzes them instead). Here is the
Fox
news story.
WE WON!!! 12-8-98
THE BAT HOUSE AND LAKE ALICE'S WILDLIFE AREA HAS BEEN SAVED! For over a year and one-half, many people were contacting the state Cabinet (Florida) in the attempt to have them force the University of Florida to keep the Lake Alice Wildlife Area and the University of Florida Bat House just the way they are. UF wanted to build a second bat house, to move the bats there, and to turn the Lake Alice area into dorms. The problem is that there is no guarantee that the bats would ever stay at the new location (it took them 4.5 years to move into the current one). The Governor and his Cabinet have told UF to look elsewhere for the location to build the dorms! Congratulations everyone!! We have helped the voices of the bats be heard and have also maintained the Lake Alice area as a wildlife and recreation area! The Alligator Newspaper has an article on this:
Here are some Alligator articles about UF's old plans
to move the bat house and put dorms on Lake Alice:
Housing complex may pave way for garage (9/25/97)
Group opposes housing designation (10/1/97)
Bat shouldn't be left homeless (10/15/97)
Protesters batty to save winged mammals (10/21/97)
Construction plans may uproot student gardens (10/24/97)
State, Chiles to decide fate of UF's Bat House (11/30/98)
Crowd rallies for UF Bat House as vote nears (12/4/98)
UF Bat House Info:
There are Mexican (Brazilian) free-tailed bats residing in the University of Florida's Bat House near Lake Alice. The bat house was originally built to give an alternative roost to the ~14,000 bats that were residing in the UF Track and Field Stadium... For a long time bats refused to call it home. It remained mostly empty for four years, but then the first batch of permanent residents moved in (Jan. 1995). Now, after over two years' worth of new-borns, the numbers have reached around 60,000! You can view them as they leave to feed every night (just as it begins to become dark out). Check them out!
Here are the long-awaited photos of the UF Bat-House!
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There are two types of bats that reside at UF:
Directions to the UF Bat House
<== Check out this excellent article about the
UF Bat House
(reproduced with permission)
<== And, here's a copy of the cool informational handout
distributed
at the UF bat house (reproduced with permission)
Other UF-related pages on bats:
"Bats Give Blood
in the Name of Good Health"
Observatory constructed to protect bat house (11/20/96)
See the Bats of the Lowry Park Zoo (Tampa)
The all-encompassing Buzbee's Bat Page
UF Bat House Homepage / http://www.afn.org/~ufbat / revised 9-24-2006