The Indiana bat is federally listed as endangered, and Arkansas sits on the southwestern shoulder of its range. The state’s 128 records don’t read like casual sightings; almost nobody identifies this mouse-eared little bat on the wing. They read like survey work, and the calendar proves it. Reports spike in April and again in December, the twin poles of the bat’s year, when biologists catch spring swarming at cave mouths and run mid-winter counts inside hibernation caves.
Geographically the record is an Ozark story. Franklin and Benton counties hold the great majority of reports, with Stone and Independence counties adding a secondary cluster around Sylamore Wildlife Management Area in the Ozark National Forest. That’s karst country, riddled with caves and abandoned mines, exactly what a bat that hibernates in dense clusters underground needs. Summer records thin out, which partly reflects the bat itself: after leaving the caves, females scatter to raise pups under loose bark in the forest, where they’re far harder to document.
NatureServe ranks the Indiana bat critically imperiled in Arkansas, and the global picture is no brighter. The bats wintering in a handful of Ozark caves represent a big share of what the state has, which makes those sites both precious and sensitive.
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