Keen’s myotis is one of the least-known bats in the Pacific Northwest, a small bat of cool coastal forest that goes about its nights almost entirely undocumented. Washington’s entire modern record amounts to 14 reports, and NatureServe ranks it critically imperiled in the state, though part of that peril ranking reflects how little is known rather than proven decline.
What’s consistent in the scatter is geography. The records hug the wet, western side of the state: Clallam and Jefferson counties on the Olympic Peninsula, the coastal counties of Pacific, Grays Harbor, and Mason, the San Juan Islands, and a few Puget Sound lowland sites. None come from the dry interior east of the Cascades. Whether that’s a true range limit or simply where the few people looking for this bat have worked is an open question, but it matches the species’ reputation as a creature of the coastal rain belt.
Reports run from April into September, peaking in midsummer, the season for bat surveys and for the bat’s own activity. With a record this thin, any confirmed Keen’s myotis in Washington, from a mist-net, an acoustic detector, or a roost, adds real knowledge.
Full species profile
