The North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) is a multi-agency, multi-national effort and is designed to address the need for a program that addresses standardized monitoring of bat species across multiple taxa in North America. The development of NABat has incorporated the expertise of bat biologists, wildlife managers, policy makers, statisticians, and data managers throughout the process. The first step in the development of NABat was to build consensus within the community of North American bat researchers and biologists on feasible monitoring techniques and protocols to assess species responses to white-nose syndrome (WNS). In summer 2012, funding was obtained from the National Landscape Conservation Cooperative network and from the National Institute of Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) to convene three workshops to develop the sampling framework for NABat. The objectives of the first workshop, held in February 2013, were to gather information on other large-scale monitoring programs and learn from their successes and failures. Monitoring program sampling designs for birds, amphibians and reptiles, and water quality at national levels, and for bats in the United Kingdom, Pacific Northwestern United States, and eastern U.S were presented and discussed. Based on these presentations and discussions, it was agreed that some type of grid-based finite sampling frame would be the most efficient approach for NABat. The second workshop, held in May 2013, was sponsored by NIMBioS and held at the NIMBioS laboratory at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Participants concentrated on fleshing out the details of the grid design, how it would be applied to acoustic monitoring and colony counts, and the analytical approaches that could be used to analyze resulting data. Additional topics included the appropriate covariates that need to be collected, the need for standardization of protocols, data management, and the needs for Geographic Information System support. The third workshop, held in November 2013, focused on refining protocols and analyses and preparing the current report. Throughout the process, feedback was gathered from potential users through presentations in webinars and at scientific meetings (e.g., the International Bat Research Conference and the White-Nose Syndrome Workshop).
