HOHENFELS, Germany -- With Halloween just past, symbols of haunted houses, black cats and bats have been everywhere. The Hohenfels training area is home to several species of endangered bats, and one young Eagle Scout candidate recently led a project to help preserve them.
While most people think of bats as scary, blood-sucking, flying rats, they really help humans. Bats eat bugs! In fact about 70% of species eat insects, with most of the rest eating fruit, and a handful of species eating fish and only one, the vampire bat, that digests blood. Despite what Hollywood portrays there are no vampire bats in Europe, not even in Transylvania.
Bats also help pollinate flowers and spread seeds through their digestion, and they are the only truly flying mammal. Bats also provided the inspiration for both radar and sonar.
Many bat species in Germany are threatened. Some of the bat species in the Hohenfels area no longer exist anywhere else in Germany. The loss of habitat is the biggest threat. The U.S. Army has been instrumental in preserving various species in the various training areas, including and especially at U.S. Army Europe's premiere training area at Hohenfels.
As the last step on the long and arduous trail to Eagle Scout, Jacob Nantz from Hohenfels Troop 303 decided to build and install several bat boxes around Hohenfels to help preserve these useful creatures.
Eagle Scout is the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouts. Out of 100 boys who start scouting, only two will earn the Eagle Scout. An Eagle Scout Project is the culmination of what a scout has learned, about planning, management, organization, safety and particularly leadership. The project must benefit the community, but it cannot be a commercial project or for an individual or business. The project aims to take the Eagle Scout candidate to the extreme in service to others.
The National Eagle Scout Association has estimated that since the project became a requirement in 1927, Eagle Scout Projects have accounted for over 100 million hours of volunteer service to the nation's communities and organizations and that Eagle Scout candidates add 3 million hours a year to that total. Nantz' project incorporated approximately 20 people and included about 120 hours of volunteer work to the community.
Working with the U.S. Army Garrison Bavaria -- Hohenfels Environmental Management Office and the Deutschen Umweltsbundesamt (Environmental Protection Agency), Nantz settled on a bat box design and contacted the Directorate of Public Works to use scrap wood to cut enough lumber for 22 bat houses.
To make this a more sustainable project and to preserve the bat houses, Nantz worked with professionals at Bau-Spezi, a hardware store in Parsberg, to find a dark non-toxic stain.
Nantz assembled a crew of friends, scouts and family members to set up an assembly line for at the Hohenfels Middle/High School Great Hall over Memorial Day weekend last May. The hard oak wood proved a challenge, but the team persevered, assembling and staining all the boxes by the end of the weekend.
"These are my peers, so I need to be a leader; I have to get them to want to follow my lead," Nantz said. "They are giving up their free time to help me, so I must keep them motivated and interested in the project."
The project hit a brief snag as summer arrived as the potential manpower went various directions. But as the school year started again, Nantz reassembled his team and over two days in September, all the houses were installed in clusters in the trees between the Sportsplatz and the Festplatz.
Bats live in family groups, with each family taking a house for themselves and the extended family living "on the same block," so the houses were mounted in clusters of four and six. Set back from the main trails, the bats have time to gain full flying control before hitting the open trails where the bugs congregate.
Bats hang from the ceiling, and drop out the open bottoms. Having no bottoms also keeps other animals from trying to occupy the bat houses, while the dark stain helps to absorb the sun's warmth.
"I learned that the bat houses have to be facing south-southeast," said Marius Schnell, one of the scouts from Troop 303. "This allows the morning and afternoon sun to warm the bat houses, keeping not only the young, but adult bats warm during the day."
With most of the materials donated by DPW and construction performed by volunteers, the project will have a tremendous impact on the local environment at a minimal financial cost.
Nantz said one of his biggest challenges as project leader was not trying to do everything himself.
"You have to show people how to do the task and then stand back and let them do it and only step in if you see something going wrong," he said.
Social Sharing