South Dakota’s occurrence databases hold 23 silver-haired bat records, split between Black Hills National Forest in the west and Waubay National Wildlife Refuge in the state’s far northeastern prairie-pothole country.
Loose bark in the Black Hills, shelterbelts on the prairie
This bat roosts alone under loose bark or in tree cavities, and the Black Hills’ ponderosa pine forest supplies exactly that kind of shelter. Waubay National Wildlife Refuge, on the opposite side of the state, offers a very different kind of tree cover, the wetland-edge woodlands and shelterbelts scattered through the prairie-pothole region, but it serves the same basic need for bark and cavities to hide in during the day.
A bat that’s often just passing through
Silver-haired bats are among the most migratory bats on the continent, moving long distances between northern summer range and southern wintering areas each year. South Dakota sits along that interior travel path, so a good share of the state’s records, concentrated from May into July, likely represent animals moving through or raising young here for a season rather than bats that spend the whole year in one patch of forest.
Status in South Dakota
USGS NAS doesn’t list the silver-haired bat as nonindigenous in South Dakota, and NatureServe ranks it S3, vulnerable, in the state. It’s native here, using both the Black Hills forest and the prairie-pothole woodlands to the east.
Full species profile
