A Mexican bat that’s stumbling along the edge of extinction due in part to the tequila industry now has a new path toward recovery.
According to a freshly updated recovery plan prepared by the Fish and Wildlife Service, it could cost about $11.2 million and take three or four decades to remove the Mexican long-nosed bat from the U.S. list of threatened and endangered species.
The bat species was listed as endangered in 1988. The Fish and Wildlife Service reports that at present there is only one confirmed mating roost located in Mexico. There are two identified Mexican long-nosed bat roosts in the United States, one in Big Bend National Park in Texas and the other on Bureau of Land Management wilderness land in New Mexico. The Mexican long-nosed bat mates and gives birth only once a year.
“The Mexican long-nosed bat uses specific roosts for different life stages,” said Jade Florence, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Biologist with the agency’s Austin Ecological Services Field Office.
