Bill Mixon said:
If you heat up part of the cave, the bats will just move and hibernate in some
cooler place. They have to hibernate in a suitably cool place in order to
depress their metabolisms enough.
As I understood that article, the plan is not to heat open areas of the
cave to warmer temperature, just the insides of bat boxes, which were described
as well insulated. The idea being that after a bat wakes up, it will seek a
warm place and find one of the boxes where it can go in and warm up. The
article stated that when they wanted to hibernate they would leave the vicinity
of the boxes, so the effects couldn't be too widespread. It would not be
practical to warm large areas of caves in any event.
Mark Minton
