South Dakota’s occurrence databases hold 129 Townsend’s big-eared bat records, overwhelmingly concentrated around Jewel Cave National Monument, a count that reflects targeted cave surveys more than casual encounters with a bat that spends its days folded into total darkness.
The Black Hills’ caves are the reason it’s here at all
This species depends on stable caves and mines for both maternity roosting and winter hibernation, and the Black Hills’ limestone caves, Jewel Cave, Wind Cave, and the smaller caves scattered through the same hills, are the only real cave habitat in an otherwise cave-poor prairie state. Take away those caves and South Dakota would have little to offer a bat built around finding one undisturbed opening in rock.
Counted by biologists, not by casual sightings
Townsend’s big-eared bat hunts moths with a whisper-quiet echolocation call and roosts with its long ears folded back against its body, which makes it one of the harder bats to notice by chance. Most of South Dakota’s records come from GBIF specimen and survey data rather than public photos, which fits a species whose colonies are usually found through dedicated roost and winter survey counts rather than a hiker’s lucky glimpse.
Status in South Dakota
USGS NAS doesn’t list Townsend’s big-eared bat as nonindigenous in South Dakota, and NatureServe ranks it S2, imperiled, in the state, among the more vulnerable species in this part of the atlas. It’s native here, dependent on the Black Hills’ cave systems for its future in the state.
Full species profile
