The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC), Bureau of Wildlife Management, seeks an organization with a bat surveying team to net and acoustically monitor 10 sites on State Game Lands in the Northwest Region prior to June 30, 2025. The goal of this project is to document and confirm the presence of as many bat species as possible, and this goal should be the primary driver for site selection by the Qualified Bat Surveyor (QBS) on site. To this end, acoustic and net locations should be dispersed amongst a diversity of habitat types, thereby allowing the PGC to characterize habitat preference between bat species. Services provided shall include, but not be limited to, specific site selection, the furnishing of all labor and equipment for the deployment of bat mist nets and acoustic detectors, and the processing and reporting of all data. Appendix A provides 10 GPS points on State Game Lands (SGLs) that represent the locations to be surveyed. These locations are ‘paired’, with each SGL containing two points, each with a 0.5-mile buffer surrounding. Each 0.5-mile circular buffer (herein referred to as a Site) will be scouted by the organization’s QBSs before final site selection occurs and will have a minimum of 420 Units of Effort for netting, plus one acoustic detector. This netting and acoustics for the paired sites will occur on the same night, during optimal weather conditions, meaning both sites and their associated nets/detector will be run concurrently (same night at the same time) with the other. The deployment of these bat detectors should be placed in an appropriate location to record high quality bat calls while also gathering species presence that may not have been detected via the netting effort. These detectors will run during the same timeframe as the netting effort (5 hours minimum; NOT all night). For the netting locations, there must be a minimum of 2 net sets spaced apart as described below, with each site having a total netting effort that must meet or exceed 420 Units of Effort (UE; also described in more detail below) on a given night.
