2023 Annual Report - Flipbook - Page 40
BAT CASTLE —MAKING HISTORY!
Our original conserva}on e昀昀orts began in 1992, when Founder and President Amanda Lollar purchased an old
building in downtown Mineral Wells,
Texas in order to save a colony of approximately 30,000 Mexican freetailed bats. The building was built in
1899 out of hand-hewn sandstone
and bats had been roos}ng in the
crawlspace for several decades. Every
summer, the mother bats would form
a nursery colony there. When Amanda
learned that the building owner
planned to destroy the bats in order
to sell the building, she bought the
property.
Over the next two decades many improvements were made to the building, including stabilizing the founda}on, adding a new roof, and installing
catwalks on the upper 昀氀oors to reach
and rescue orphaned bats. Before
these improvements were made, over
6,000 pounds of guano was removed
that had accumulated over the decades.
Through careful observa}on of the
colony, Amanda made numerous discoveries about free-tailed bats, including