Utah’s big brown bat records connect Grand Staircase–Escalante’s cliffs and canyons with Dixie National Forest and developed places in between. The species is a powerful beetle hunter whose broad jaws can crush hard insect cases, and its willingness to roost in buildings, bridges, caves, and tree cavities puts it in more human settings than many western bats.
July leads the 398-record calendar, when maternity colonies are active and warm nights support abundant flying insects. Detector coverage and access shape that peak, so it is not a count of bats. In winter, big brown bats retreat to cool protected hibernation sites, making the warm-season record bias biologically plausible without proving statewide abundance.
Its S4 (apparently secure) Utah rank fits a bat that tolerates buildings and bridges as readily as caves, one of the few species here whose comfort around human structures works in its favor.
Full species profile
