Bats face threats from white-nose syndrome, habitat loss, and wind turbine collisions. As the most important nocturnal insect controllers and pollinators, their welfare and conservation have cascading ecosystem benefits.
Bat welfare is inseparable from bat conservation — these long-lived, slow-reproducing mammals cannot withstand population losses at the rates caused by white-nose syndrome, turbine strikes, and habitat loss. Individual bat welfare matters: a bat dying of white-nose syndrome experiences weeks of progressive fungal infection and disrupted hibernation before death. But the scale of loss also has ecosystem welfare implications, as insect-eating bats control pest populations that harm countless other animals. Supporting bat conservation is simultaneously a direct welfare intervention for individual bats and an indirect welfare benefit for the ecosystems they support.