One of two steel gates installed at Pitts Cave in Wayne County. Photo: Nicole Hodges / MMNS
The Clarion Ledger recently featured the work of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in an article about Pitts Cave. The agencies partnered with other volunteers this past summer to install two steel gates to prevent human access inside the cave. Human activity within the cave can have negative – even if unintended – impacts on the hundreds of bats using the site as a maternity colony and wintering hibernacula. Tricolored bats (Perimyotis subflavus) and Southeastern Myotis (Myotis austroriparius) are the two most common species documented inside the cave.