Bats provide vital ecosystem services including insect control and pollination. They face threats from disease, habitat loss, and wind turbine mortality that require targeted welfare and conservation responses.
Bats face welfare threats at both individual and population levels. White-nose syndrome causes visible suffering in affected bats — infected animals wake prematurely from hibernation, deplete fat reserves, and starve or freeze. Turbine strikes cause blunt force trauma, internal bleeding, and death. Roost disturbance during maternity season leaves pups dependent on mothers who abandon disturbed roosts, causing starvation. Individual bat welfare is inseparable from conservation concern given their low reproductive rates. Each adult bat lost represents years of future insect control lost to ecosystems. Bat conservation requires both individual welfare protections (roost safeguarding, turbine mitigation) and disease management at population scale.