Welfare and Handling Recommendations for Bat Surveys in Canada

Concern for bats and their protection has steadily increased globally over the past 2 decades, including in Canada. This heightened interest has resulted in increased population and health monitoring and greater regulatory requirements for bat-related work, compared to the past. There is also increased awareness about bat welfare when handling, particularly with respect to pathogen transmission. Although guidelines for effective techniques to study bats exist, such recommendations rarely mention explicitly how best to prioritize animal welfare. Instead, safe handling practices are implicit, often passed down from mentor to mentee, and the collective wisdom is seldom permanently recorded. Here, we provide recommendations based on consensus reached through review of existing published materials and thoughtful discussion among leading experts with cultural knowledge that spans decades. These recommendations are not meant to be prescriptive but, instead, describe the latest best practices for capturing and handling bats to promote their welfare during capture-markrecapture surveys. We provide recommendations related to biosafety; capture and removal from nets and traps; techniques for restraint, handling, holding, and release; methods for short- and long-term marking; collection of biological samples; photography; euthanasia; and health surveillance.