The Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota provides
quality medical care and rehabilitation for all injured,
sick and orphaned wildlife, and shares its knowledge
with the people who care about them.

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Bat Release

Three of Minnesota's bats are colony bats, living in caves. To protect the colonies from intrusion by humans, the DNR has protected several larger colony caves throughout the state.

Big Brown Bats, Little Brown Myotis and E. Pipistrelles are all released into these caves. When we prepare to release a bat, we wrap it into its "bat bed," usually an old pillow case that we've modified to provide a safe place for the bat to hang while in its cage.

We then put it into a small paper bag and place it into a cooler. At the cave, we unpack the cooler (it also contains towels to help insulate the bat and to prevent the bag from sliding around, and a pair of lightweight gloves), removing the "bat bag" and sliding the bat out of the bag. The bats are typically clinging to their bat bed that we use in their cages at WRC, this eliminates any issue of haivng to actually handle the bat.

We extend our arms through the protective barrier and gently sway the bat bed up and down until the bat lifts off and joins the other bats flying in the cave.

Releasing a rehabbed bat is an amazing experience and several of our volunteers have completed bat release training sessions so they may release bats on their own.