Wyoming’s fringed myotis records tilt east, which is the opposite of what the species’ range map might suggest. Weston, Crook, and Laramie counties, along the state’s eastern edge, hold most of the 16 records. Weston and Crook border the Black Hills of South Dakota, and the bat’s Wyoming presence reads as a western extension of that cave-and-ponderosa stronghold.
The rest of the state is mostly silence. A few records reach Sweetwater and Albany counties, but the Red Desert and Green River country, for all its rocky promise, has produced almost nothing. 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 reports bunch from June through August, when maternity roosts are 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
