The long-eared myotis is a bat of the pine forests and rocky canyon country of the interior West, and South Dakota holds the far eastern edge of its range. The state’s 23 records since 2000 come from just two counties, and 20 of them come from one: Harding County, up in the northwestern corner, where the ponderosa ridges of the Cave Hills and Slim Buttes give this forest bat its only real toehold in the state. Custer County, in the Black Hills, holds the other three.
That lopsided map mixes genuine habitat limits with survey luck. Harding County’s buttes are the right country, but they’re also remote, and the records there reflect the fact that somebody went looking. NatureServe ranks the species critically imperiled in South Dakota, so each of those two dozen records carries weight.
Reports fall between May and August, with August the peak, matching both the bat’s active season and the months when mist-netting crews work western water sources. The long-eared myotis gleans insects off bark and foliage rather than chasing them in open air, which keeps it close to the trees and largely out of casual view.
Full species profile
