A Trade on Paper Doesn't Move a Bat Colony

Judge Clymer's post calls the land swap a win for wildlife. Sixty percent more acreage, he says. Trade 665 acres in McCracken County for 1,068 acres in Fulton County, and conservation comes out ahead.

That math works on a spreadsheet. It doesn't work in the woods.

This isn't about one bat that isn't federally listed yet

Judge Clymer's post focuses on the tricolored bat, correctly pointing out that it hasn't been federally listed as endangered. But that's not the only species that matters here, and it isn't even the most protected one.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service documents federally endangered species with confirmed habitat on and around this site right now, not pending, not proposed. The Indiana bat has been federally endangered since 1973, and the site has documented suitable roosting habitat for it. The gray bat has been federally endangered since 1976. These aren't animals "under consideration." They're already protected under federal law, today.

Habitat isn't a number. It's a specific place.

Here's the part that gets lost when a land deal gets reduced to acreage totals. A bat colony doesn't roost wherever it's told to. Indiana bats and gray bats need specific conditions: mature trees with the right bark and cavities for roosting, safe corridors for foraging, and stable, established habitat that's taken decades to develop. The 665 acres in McCracken County are part of a wooded tract that's supported that wildlife for generations.

The acreage that came back to Kentucky Fish and Wildlife sits in Fulton County, more than 60 miles away, in a flood-prone bottomland area. That's a different kind of landscape doing a different ecological job. Flood-prone bottomland can be valuable for conservation in its own right, but it doesn't substitute for mature upland forest that already has bats living in it. You can't relocate a species by moving a property line. Wildlife doesn't read deeds.

More acres isn't automatically better acres

Nobody has publicly shown that anyone assessed whether these two parcels are ecologically equivalent before this deal was finalized. Did anyone survey what's actually living on the 665 acres before it was handed over for construction? Did anyone confirm the Fulton County land can actually support the same species? Those are simple, fair questions. So far, nobody in county or state government has answered them.

Calling this an increase in protected habitat assumes all acres are interchangeable. They're not. A 60 percent bump in acreage means nothing to a bat that can't live there.

We can support growth and still ask this question

We're not opposed to jobs or development. We're asking that the people making these decisions actually look at what's being lost, and what's being gained, before calling it a win. So far, that hasn't happened. It should, before the next irreversible step is taken.