Protecting bats the job of ‘Batman’
Posted on Thursday, June 5, 2008
The mailing address for Devil’s Den State Park is West Fork, although the park is actually 17 miles to the south on Arkansas 170 in Lee Creek Valley.
That’s where “Batman Harry” hangs out.
Harry Harnish, 61, has been at the park since 1985. He’ll lead the 19 th annual Bat-O-Rama, scheduled for June 13-15. He will retire next summer, after the event’s 20 th anniversary.
The park attracts tourists for many reasons. There are cabins and campsites, hiking, backpacking and mountain-bike trails, and a horse camp with 20 miles of riding trails.
But the park’s sandstone and limestone caves are also a big draw. This is where the bats hibernate.
The Ozark big-eared bats have bodies 2 1 / 2 to 3 inches long, with “massive ears,” about an inch long. Their wings span 10 to 11 inches.
When Harnish arrived as park interpreter, he didn’t know much about bats.
“I read a couple of books and people thought I was an expert,” he says.
The Ozark big-eared bats are one of 16 species in Arkansas, all of which eat insects at night. These bats, which eat mostly moths and mosquitos, aren’t nearly as critical to local crops as the ones in Texas hill country, where bats save crops by devouring millions of moths. Some 1. 5 million bats spend spring and summer under Austin’s Congress Avenue bridge, he says.
The Ozark species is endangered, with maybe 2, 500 still living. Other than Devil’s Den, a group of the bats hibernate in caves around Stilwell and Tahlequah, Okla., and others are around Yellville.
The Devil’s Den bats hibernate in a 50-foot-deep crevice above Devil’s Den Trail. Harnish wanted to protect them, but the crevice entrance was too narrow for a gate.
So he turned to the inventor of the spelogger, a device that monitors cave visitors. The man customized an alarm system for Big Ear Cave.
When someone uses a flashlight to enter the crevice — which is required to see — a sensor signals a transmitter, which makes all park radios come alive with the announcement: “To the Batcave, Robin, not a moment to spare.”
“Just waking up a bat, you’re harming it,” Harnish says. “They’re surviving the winter on stored-up fat reserves.”
Education, he says, is the best way to protect the bats. That’s why he scheduled Bat-O-Rama during the peak hiking season. Though he has talked to thousands of people about bats, he never tires of it.
“I really feel like I’ve educated an awful lot of people,” he says.
Among those are a Clarksville area family that has attended every Bat-O-Rama. They gave him a Batman clock, one of many bat-related items he has received over the years. He also has stuffed animals, mugs and a Batmobile phone that doesn’t work with the park’s updated phone system.
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