HOHENFELS, Germany (July 5, 2016) -- As part of the requirements for earning her Girl Scout Gold Award, 18-year-old Tanja Vass came up with the idea of creating a biome for the Greater Horseshoe Bat. These bats are considered threatened with extinction by the European Union, and the Hohenfels colony is the only one known in Germany.
A key objective of the Joint Multinational Readiness Center is the stewardship of the environment for the 40,000 acres that compose training and cantonment areas.
While normally handled by the staff of the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division and the German Forest Service, one Hohenfels High School student took it upon herself to coordinate a major project to improve the ecology here for decades to come.
"The number of Greater Horseshoe Bats in Germany has been dwindling recently," said Vass. "A few years ago, a former church in Bergheim in the Hohenfels Training Area was converted into a bat habitat. However, the surrounding area was not necessarily rich in food for the bats and not a highly desirable home for them. My job was to create two pools of water--referred to as wet biotopes--that would hopefully give the area's ecosystem the boost it needed to bring on the bats."
The Gold Award is the highest achievement in the Girl Scouts of the USA. To earn the award, scouts are required to identify a problem and create a plan of action to solve it. Once the service project is approved, the scout takes the lead to put together a team to complete the project. To meet Gold Award standards, the planning and implementation of the project must take a minimum of 80 hours and provide a lasting benefit to the community.
The project involved digging two pools, one 12 by 6 meters and the other 12 by 10 meters in size. The pools each had three steps built in to allow for the growth of vegetation, and reach two meters at their deepest point.
After starting the digging using hand tools, Vass soon realized that the scope of the project meant that heavy equipment was required.
"We made contact with Sgt. Joseph Woods and Spc. Michael Edwards, two soldiers with a National Guard unit deployed to Hohenfels at the time who also had access to some heavy machinery," said Vass. "These men volunteered at least an entire weekend to helping my project and without their assistance, my family could still be out there digging to this day. They made quick work of the holes, tripling a week's worth of work in about half an hour."
Once the pools were dug, Vass laid felt and foil linings on the floor of the pools and weighed them down with nearly two tons of pebbles.
Once the project was complete, the pools filled naturally with rainwater over the course of a season.
"I never would have thought at the beginning of all this that I would be this proud of something that I had done," said Vass. "Honestly, the realization that I did something big to change the environment didn't come until I was explaining the project to people. Actually seeing the difference between the before pictures and the biotope today is almost overwhelming."
Vass estimates that her pools will serve as a habitat for bats for nearly 25 years and require little maintenance and upkeep.
"Tanja's project is a great example of German/American partnership," said Désirée Schwers of the German Federal Forestry Service. "It is hoped that Tanja's project will encourage the existing bat colony to establish a second separate colony of reproducing greater horseshoe bats to ensure the survival of this extremely rare species of bat in Germany."
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