Ball State University professor Timothy Carter has been taking trips for about seven years to abandoned mines where bats reside, and his work to preserve these bats has earned him a national award.
The Wildlife Habitat Council gave Carter its Community Partner of the Year award for his work restoring homes for the endangered Indiana bat. Carter is one of the leading national experts on the endangered Indiana bat, biology department chairman Kemuel Badger said.
"I think it's quite an honor, particularly for a young scientist such as himself," Badger said.
Carter, assistant professor of biology, is an expert in zoology and has published widely on bat conservation, according to the Wildlife Habitat Council Web site.
Carter was nominated for the award by Unimin Corporation, a mining company in southern Illinois and member of the Wildlife Habitat Council, for his work as an adviser and overseer in a project to stabilize about 50 mines.
Carter said that although almost every cave contained bats, six or seven of the abandoned mines housed the endangered Indiana bat. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, only about 500,000 of the species remain.
Carter helped the population of the endangered Indiana bats in the mines grow from 9,000 to 33,000 in six years, according to the Wildlife Habitat Council Web site.
The bats started to live in the mines after Unimin stopped mining underground. Carter said he discovered that the entrances to the abandoned mines were caving in from freezing water and falling rocks, and that the bats were either trapped inside or could not get in to hibernate, he said.
Carter and Unimin decided to create a tunnel-like structure to keep the entrances open, Carter said.
There are only one or two mines that aren't protected, he said.
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