Washington’s long-legged myotis record is broad but thin: 43 reports spread across 16 counties, touching nearly every corner of the state without settling anywhere. Columbia County in the Blue Mountains leads the list, anchored by a small cluster from the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness, while records from Stevens and Pend Oreille counties cover the northeast, Pierce and Skagit the west side, and Whitman and Columbia the Palouse edge.
That statewide scatter is meaningful in itself. Unlike some of its close relatives, the long-legged myotis isn’t tied to the wet coastal belt or the high Cascades alone; it’s a bat of dry pine forest, canyon country, and mountain meadow alike, and the Washington record reflects that catholic taste. NatureServe ranks it vulnerable in the state, a standing that owes as much to how easily bats slip past documentation as to any measured decline.
July and August hold the bulk of the reports, as they do nearly everywhere in the West, when the bats are most active and survey crews are out with nets and detectors. The quiet months in the data are a shared blind spot, not evidence the bats are gone.
Full species profile
