By Ronica Stromberg
The skies over the north lawn of Hardin Hall just got a little friendlier toward bats with the addition of a bat house. John Carroll, professor of wildlife ecology and management, led a dozen students from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Wildlife Club in building the bat house. A crew from the university’s Landscape Services installed it on a pole 20 feet above ground on April 16.
Carroll and Joe Kouba, president of the Wildlife Club, presented the bat house to the School of Natural Resources community at the school's Earth Day celebration on April 21.
The bat house joins birdfeeders, birdhouses, a tower for chimney swifts and patches of lawn converted to prairie at the school. Carroll said the addition of the bat house was one part of a 12-year effort to enhance the school property by providing habitat for wildlife and giving people the chance to conserve and observe it.
"We're the environmental school at the University of Nebraska," he pointed out. "Our north lawn was, for a lot of us in the school, a bit of an embarrassment, because it was just another big mass of mowed lawn. And so, we were like, 'OK, it's a big enough area where we could make it some multiuse facility that is a nice place for people to be, makes the campus more welcoming, instead of just an ugly lawn, and at the same time, serves some educational purposes, which it's already doing.'"
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