Bats provide essential ecosystem services but face threats from White-Nose Syndrome, habitat loss, and wind turbine mortality. Protecting bat welfare benefits entire ecosystems.
Bat welfare is complex because bats face welfare challenges both as individuals and as populations, and as keystone species whose decline cascades through ecosystems. Individual welfare concerns include the suffering of White-Nose Syndrome which causes affected bats to arouse repeatedly from hibernation depleting fat reserves until they die of starvation. Roost disturbance during hibernation causes similar energetic costs. Population-level threats including habitat loss and wind turbine mortality affect the ecological functions that bats provide. Conservation approaches that protect hibernacula, preserve foraging habitat, and modify wind turbine operation during high bat-activity periods provide practical welfare and conservation benefits simultaneously.