Oregon’s open databases hold just 7 fringed myotis records from 2000 on, a thin showing even for a bat. Four of them come from Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve in Josephine County, 2 more from neighboring Jackson County, and the last from Deschutes National Forest east of the Cascades.
Caves, cliffs, and rock crevices
Fringed myotis favors dry country with structure: sagebrush grassland, canyon rims, cliffs, and rock crevices rather than dense wet forest. Caves and mines serve it too, and the marble caverns at Oregon Caves, in the Siskiyou Mountains, supply exactly the kind of sheltered rock the species uses elsewhere in its range.
Snags can stand in for rock
Away from the desert’s rock faces, the species also roosts in tree snags in parts of the Pacific Northwest, with females favoring loose bark and cavities in dry forest. In Oregon that likely means dry conifer forest near these sites can supplement caves and rock faces as summer roost sites, even though no records here specifically document a snag roost.
All 7 records fall between June and September, too few to describe a seasonal pattern. NatureServe ranks the fringed myotis S2, Imperiled, in Oregon, against a G4 status globally, and it’s treated as native to its Oregon range.
Full species profile
