HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Demolition has started on an old building in Huntsville that has become the seasonal home to an estimated one million bats. The Texas prison system owns the old cotton warehouse that is now considered to be a health hazard.
The bats have lived in the abandoned building for at least the last 20 years. By this time next year, they will have to find another place to call home.
“We hope that by next winter, next spring, we’ll have this building completely down,” TDCJ spokesman Robert Hurst said.
Demolition started on the northern end of the building, then it will stop and resume in the fall.
Inside the prison system’s building across the street, behind the red brick walls, live hundreds of convicted felons.
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The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has been working with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to devise a plan to relocate the bats.
“That will include exclusion tactics ... so installing one-way gates so that any bats that are there after the migration begins can leave the warehouse at the same time when those gates are put in to seal up the warehouse so that new bats can’t get in,” TPWD urban wildlife program leader Richard Heilbrun said.
The plan will be like locking the door after the bats leave for the night.
What those involved are hoping is that the bats will choose to relocate to bat houses that have been built one block away. For whatever reason, the bats never liked the houses in the past, and instead, continued to return to the warehouse each year. Once they return and the building is gone, they won’t have much of a choice.
“There is not one thing that we can point to that will make the bat houses attractive to bats,” Heilbrun said.
It is against state law to kill bats living in uninhabited buildings, according to TPWD, which makes their re-homing that much more delicate.
“To make sure everything is done efficiently and environmentally, we’ll take however much time is needed,” Hurst said.