One county owns the Kansas pallid bat record. Barber County, in the Red Hills of the state’s south-central tier, accounts for 128 of 133 mapped reports, with only a small second pocket in Nemaha County to the northeast. A tally that lopsided says as much about a well-worked study area as it does about the bat, but it also makes ecological sense. The Red Hills’ gypsum canyons, rock crevices, and arid grassland are classic pallid bat country, unlike anything else in Kansas.
The calendar is just as concentrated. Reports crowd into August and September, the late-summer stretch when young bats are on the wing and colonies gather before leaving their summer roosts. Winter records are absent, consistent with a bat that doesn’t stay for the cold months.
NatureServe ranks the pallid bat S1, critically imperiled in Kansas, even as the species holds its own across the wider West. Kansas sits at the northeastern edge of that range, and the Barber County cluster may be the state’s only substantial foothold. Protecting the Red Hills’ roosting country amounts to protecting the species in Kansas.
Full species profile
