Bats are among the most ecologically important and most misunderstood mammals, facing threats from white-nose syndrome, wind turbine strikes, and habitat loss that cause massive mortality and suffering.
Bat welfare encompasses both the suffering of individuals and the devastating scale of population crashes from disease and anthropogenic mortality. White-nose syndrome causes bats to wake repeatedly from hibernation, depleting fat reserves until animals starve to death while still in their winter roosts — a prolonged and miserable death. Turbine barotrauma causes internal hemorrhage without external wounds in bats that collide with the pressure gradient near turbine blades. Conservation measures that protect bat populations simultaneously protect the welfare of enormous numbers of individuals from these causes of premature, painful death.