South Dakota’s hoary bat reports lean west. Custer County in the southern Black Hills supplies the largest share, with Pennington County next, and the rest scatter across the state’s eastern half. The Hills hold South Dakota’s largest block of forest, and a bat that roosts alone in tree foliage has good reason to turn up there. Still, the western hills get heavy survey attention, and records mark where people looked as much as where bats are.
The timing is tight. Every mapped report falls between June and September, with June the single busiest month. That fits a migratory bat arriving on northern summering grounds once the nights warm, then slipping south before freeze-up. There’s no winter record, and for a long-distance migrant none is expected.
NatureServe gives the bat an S3, vulnerable in South Dakota, and a G3 worldwide, though the IUCN still lists the species as Least Concern. A wide-ranging migrant can look comfortable on paper while thinning locally, which makes each Black Hills report a useful data point.
Full species profile
