Bats perform irreplaceable ecosystem services as pollinators and insect controllers. Their welfare faces multiple threats including white-nose syndrome, wind turbine collisions, and roost disturbance.
Bat welfare at individual and population levels is affected by multiple simultaneous threats that interact in complex ways. White-nose syndrome causes welfare harm through progressive energy depletion — bats rousing from torpor repeatedly until starving — and is spreading westward into populations with no immunity. Wind turbine barotrauma — where bats suffer internal hemorrhage from pressure changes near moving blades — causes acute welfare harm and significant population mortality. Roost disturbance during hibernation is both illegal and welfare-harmful: disturbed bats burn critical fat reserves that may be insufficient to see them through winter. Human development destroying summer maternity roosts disrupts pup rearing with welfare costs to dependent young. The aggregate welfare harm across hundreds of bat species and billions of individuals represents enormous suffering largely invisible to welfare discourse dominated by charismatic mammals. Bats' ecological service value is irreplaceable — their welfare directly supports human agricultural welfare through pest suppression and pollination.