I Description of property

Riverside (highway) overpass in Punta Gorda

II Description of problem

Plans to expand the Peace River bridge and widening the Riverside overpass were in place. However, a colony of several thousand Mexican freetail bats had been residing under the overpass for years. Concern for the bats and their safety was a major problem for the project. After over a year of meetings and extensive planning, parties involved in the bridge construction agreed to perform a humane exclusion to remove all the bats prior to construction. Friends of bats was called in for the job.

III Method used

Using a boom, we netted all the seam gaps so that the bats could get out but not back in. The bats have moved to a neighboring overpass which is less than 1/4 mile away that was already home to a colony of bats. Once the bridge widening is completed and safe, it is hoped that the bats will move back.

During our work we were quite shocked when a large red rat snake popped out of one of the pilings! It was living in the base of the column, apparently feeding on an occasional bat and ROACHES!

Thousands of large cockroaches came out to greet us when we started shining a light into the seam gaps. The cockroach infestation was so heavy that we had to set our boom bucket away from the frame to keep the roaches from running on to us, our nets and our boom.

A major problem was that we could not spray any pesticide to kill the roaches because we did not want to harm any of the bats.