Massachusetts holds just 14 records for the northern myotis, and that thin count now doubles as a measure of how hard this bat has been hit, not just how hard it is to find.
Old forest above, old mine shafts below
This species needs two very different shelters within the same landscape: loose bark or tree cavities to roost under all summer, and cool, humid caves or mine shafts to hibernate in through winter. Quabbin Reservoir’s protected, undisturbed watershed forest, out in the state’s central uplands, and Mount Greylock’s high Berkshire woods both supply the closed-canopy summer cover this bat needs, while old rock crevices and mine workings in that same hill country stand in for the caves it depends on once the cold sets in.
A record gap that traces a real collapse
The state’s few records cluster February through April and again in July and August, with just a single October record and long gaps everywhere else on the calendar. That pattern lines up with when biologists are most likely to find this bat, at hibernation sites in the cold months and at summer roosts later on, but the bigger story is how few records there are at all. White-nose syndrome, the fungal disease that first appeared in a cave near Albany, New York, in 2006, has hit this species harder in the Northeast than almost anywhere else it occurs, and Massachusetts sat close enough to the outbreak’s origin to feel it early.
Status in Massachusetts
NatureServe ranks the northern myotis S1, Critically Imperiled, in Massachusetts, sharply worse than its Near Threatened status worldwide. It’s native to the state, and the few records that remain here trace a disease-driven collapse more than a naturally scarce animal.
Full species profile
