South Dakota’s fringed myotis records come from one island of habitat: the Black Hills. There are only 3 since 2000, two from Custer County and one from Pennington County, with Custer State Park the one named site. East or west of the hills, the record vanishes.
That geography makes sense for a bat of ponderosa forest and rocky canyon country. The Black Hills rise out of the plains as the easternmost real mountains on the species’ range, close enough to its western core to hold a persisting population. The caves help twice over: they’re roosting habitat, and they’re where biologists actually look, so the few records reflect effort as well as animal.
The three records fall one each in July, August, and September, the bat’s summer active season, but that’s too few to call a peak. NatureServe ranks the fringed myotis Imperiled (S2) in South Dakota, an honest grade for a bat at the edge of its range and tied to a single landform. Protecting roosting habitat in the hills does more for this species in the state than anything happening out on the surrounding plains.
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