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What We Do/SW Mines & Caves
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Program Overview


This program works proactively with state, federal and private organizations to help them identify and manage important roosts for bats in abandoned mines and caves. Collaboration among organizations and management over large geographical areas helps to ensure the best management decisions for public safety and bats.

Program Goals
To conserve threatened, endangered and endemic (native to an area) species through protection of important mine and cave roosts in the southwestern United States. We emphasize large-area management that encompasses critical sites for bats that migrate between winter and summer roosts.

Program Objectives
  • Capacity building and public awareness through targeted trainings, symposia, educational materials and outreach programs that support public awareness and improved decision-making.


  • Management and conservation of mine and cave roosts across entire landscapes to maintain ecological connectivity for migratory bats and to increase public safety.


  • Supporting targeted research to refine management and conservation actions.

Geographic Area
BCI’s program emphasizes conserving connections among critical roosts for bats over large areas through management of mine and cave roosts in the western United States, where abandoned mines are concentrated. We work in major forest, desert and mountain ecoregions, primarily in an area that extends from West Texas through New Mexico and Arizona to California, along with much of Colorado, Utah and Nevada. Although we are focused in the arid Southwest, we will respond to serious abandoned-mine issues outside this region.


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Last Updated: Monday, 25 January 2010