Bats will be the focus of October’s Redbud Audubon program meeting
The Redbud Audubon Society is pleased to announce that Rachael Long will be guest presenter at its Thursday Oct. 17, monthly program meeting. Rachael’s topic is: The Benefits of Bats: Nature’s Pest Control. The program starts at 7 p.m. and registration can be achieved by clicking on the link in this newsletter or going to www.redbudaudubon.org and clicking on the registration link on the home page. The Zoom link for the program will be sent the day of the program.
Rachael Long served as the UC Cooperative Extension IPM Advisor in the Sacramento Valley for 32 years. Her work led to the publication of numerous manuals, including those on dry beans, alfalfa, sunflower, onion seed, and songbirds, bats, and owls. She also worked on ways to protect surface water quality from pesticides, leading to the adoption of various practices that improve water quality, including cover crops and vegetated filter strips.
She also pioneered work on hedgerows, showcasing that flowering plants on field edges attract bees and natural enemies; these in turn move into adjacent crops for better pollination and pest control services, leading to enhanced yields and reduced pesticide use.
Her work on bats revealed that bats control pests, with their voracious appetite for insects, leading growers to install bat houses on their farms to attract colonies of bats. This is a win for bats and farmers in that bats get a home and farmers get free pest control services. Rachael also writes children’s chapter books. Her Black Rock Desert Trilogy focuses on bats and how good they are through a high adventure story. Her newest book, See You Later, Alligator is a new series that focuses on wildlife and wildlife conservation. Rachael is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Davis, lives on a farm near Woodland, and was the recipient the UC Sustainable Ag leadership award in 2018 and the Agronomy Society of America award in 2024. She currently has emeritus status with the University of California.
