Kansas’s western small-footed myotis records come from exactly two counties, Logan and Gove, out on the High Plains of the far west. That tight cluster matches the bat’s tastes: it’s a creature of breaks, badlands, and chalk bluffs, and the Smoky Hill River country in those counties holds the roughest rock in the state. The wooded river corridors of eastern Kansas, whatever they offer other bats, aren’t its ground.
Every record falls between May and September, peaking from July into September. That’s when the bats are active and when anyone surveying is likely to find them; whether they winter in those same bluffs or leave the state is a question the current record can’t answer.
NatureServe captures that uncertainty with an S2B rank: imperiled, as a breeder, in Kansas. The B means the assessment covers the breeding season only. With 30 records from two counties, Kansas’s hold on this species is real but narrow, and the chalk country of the northwest carries all of it.
Full species profile
