Wyoming’s fringed myotis file holds a single record since 2000, from Albany County in the southeast. The state’s northeastern corner borders the Black Hills of South Dakota, a cave-and-ponderosa stronghold with its own fringed myotis subspecies, yet nothing from Weston or Crook counties falls inside the current file.
The rest of the state is silent too. The Red Desert and Green River country, for all its rocky promise, has produced nothing in that time. Whether that’s a real gap or an unsurveyed one is an open question. With a bat that roosts in crevices and hunts at night, records follow biologists with nets and detectors more than they follow the bats.
NatureServe’s state rank, S2B, grades the species Imperiled in the breeding season, and the single record is dated August, when maternity roosts are still active and survey crews are out. Wyoming sits well within the species’ broader western range, yet its record is thin enough that a single new roost found in the eastern counties would measurably change the picture.
Full species profile
