Washington is the northern edge of the pallid bat’s world, and the record shows it. Mapped reports cluster in the dry interior, Grant, Benton, and Douglas counties in the Columbia Basin, with a scattering east to Spokane and south along the Klickitat. This is shrub-steppe and basalt coulee country, the closest thing Washington has to the warm deserts where the species is more at home.
Reports run from May through September and crest in June and July, when bats are raising pups and most active on warm nights. The file thins to nothing in winter, consistent with a bat that retreats deep into rock crevices or slips south when the cold sets in. As with any count like this, the summer shape mixes the bats’ real schedule with the season when people are out netting and listening.
NatureServe ranks the pallid bat S3, vulnerable in Washington, though it remains secure across its wider range. The Hanford Reach and the coulee country of the basin hold the state’s most suitable roosting habitat, and the record suggests those warm, rocky corridors are where Washington’s pallid bats hang on.
Full species profile
