BRITTONS NECK — Fireflies flickered in near synchronicity against the dark canopy as two researchers worked below in a swampy clearing. Standing over a dented card table, they placed a tiny, screeching bat in a canvas bag. Then they delicately set it on a scale.
Jennifer Kindel, a bat biologist, recited the weight. A wildlife technician tapped the number into a tablet with a gloved hand. Both donned surgical masks.
They feared spreading a deadly fungus that’s been called a real-world version of the fungi apocalypse depicted in HBO’s “The Last of Us.” Harmless to humans, this fungus overrides a bat’s immune system during hibernation. It is wiping out entire cave colonies.
“Ultimately, they die of starvation,” Kindel said, while measuring the wing of a southeastern bat. It was well past midnight and she’d already caught eight of these creatures with a two-story net she erected in the Woodbury Tract Wildlife Management Area, a preserve in Marion County just 35 miles from the South Carolina coast.
BRITTON'S NECK, SC: The unincorporated area in Marion County is home to Woodbury Tract Wildlife Management Area, one of the many state-run preserves where the Department of Natural Resources is surveying for endangered bats nearly wiped out by a deadly fungus.
It was a good haul, but she hoped to catch a different kind of bat: the sole survivors of a species once considered mountain dwellers.
A small number of northern long-eared bats have learned to avoid fungi-infested cave colonies, tapping into a previously unknown behavior to roost in trees that grow near the Atlantic Ocean. By escaping the risks posed by mountain life, these bats are confronting a new mortal threat: coastal developers. This problem goes beyond South Carolina and is likely much bigger than bats.
Today, white-nose syndrome is wiping out an entire branch of the bat family tree in America’s Southeastern forests. Northern long-eared bats landed on the federal endangered species list in March; scientists anticipate at least two more bat species could soon end up on the list, spurring protective measures that could put the brakes on development to ensure their survival.
At least one massive Charleston project already hangs in the balance.
Plans call for 18,000 homes to be built in an undeveloped forest on the Cainhoy peninsula that is half the size of Manhattan and owned by the renowned Guggenheim family. The tract was being cleared for development when federal officials halted the work in May due to concerns for the long-eared bat's safety. Then, Alabama scientists discovered their first long-eared bat on the Gulf Coast, within a short drive from rapidly growing Pensacola Beach area.
The developer for the Cainhoy property told one reporter that the project would inevitably get built and that he was working closely with federal agencies in the meantime. Others see the bat's new endangered status as a serious hurdle to development.
Over the summer, the bat's listing sparked a surprising battle that reached all the way to Capitol Hill, pitting high-dollar growth against efforts to protect the long-term health of the species.
One South Carolina congressman announced his desire to see the long-eared bats "wiped out." For longtime conservationists, this was nothing new.
In the 1990s, the Pacific timber industry warred with an owl that, like these bats, depended on an old-growth forest habitat for its survival. This was the first endangered species to become embedded in the zeitgeist of the decade. Then-candidate Bill Clinton stumped on it in his run for president. Videos of young protesters handcuffed to logging equipment landed on the nightly news.
Timber groups, who feared that the northern spotted owl's 1990 listing would gut the local logging economy, branded their opponents “eco-terrorists.” Bumper stickers around timber towns read, "Spotted owls taste like chicken."
The spotted owl conflict, in the end, thwarted the tree-cutting plans of some timber companies. It also changed the way Americans thought about natural resources. The Endangered Species Act, the landmark law that just turned 50 years old, went from being one of the most bipartisan laws ever passed to one of the most polarizing.
In the years since, other species have been dubbed the “next spotted owl” for similarly pitting environmentalists against local landowners. Will northern long-eared bats be next?
Today’s battle between endangered bats and developers of the South has parallels to critter wars from decades ago. And according to historian Lowell Baier, those stories carry lessons about politicization and polarization. These battles, he said, aren’t really about animals. They’re about land.
“The spotted owl was a scapegoat,” said Baier, author of "The Codex of the Endangered Species Act: The First Fifty Years." “It was never about the darn owl.”
Bat biologist Jennifer Kindel uses poles and a pulley system to erect a mist nest to try to catch — and then release — endangered bats in a state-run wildlife management area near Brittons Neck on May 31, 2023. Clare Fieseler/Staff
Critter wars, on repeat
Few people know this better than Kindel, South Carolina’s lead bat biologist for the Department of Natural Resources.
Her passion for wildlife started with birds and led to a career that has given her a front-row seat to some of the most controversial endangered species conflicts in American history, from spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest to greater sage grouse of the Plains and, now, to imperiled bats taking refuge in the South's coastal forests.
"Whenever a creature hits an intersection with a powerful industry, it does get messy," she said.
Kindel was born in Oregon's Klamath Falls, the heart of spotted owl territory, where she watched the conflicts between landowners and conservationists play out on television as a child. Her masters research brought her to the Western plains, to study the imperiled greater sage grouse, which became the first species that newspapers dubbed the “next spotted owl" in the early 2000s.
Wildlife groups advocated listing the sage grouse as "threatened" despite protests from oil and ranching groups. Hoping to avoid another critter-driven political battle, the 11 Western states where sage grouse roam collaborated on a $200 million conservation plan that skirted the Endangered Species Act entirely.
The state-led plan focused on protecting "core habitat" where the birds breed. But important wintering habitat, which Kindel's research helped to highlight, was mostly sidelined.
In 2015, despite declines topping 80 percent, the wildlife service said the greater sage grouse's listing under the act wasn't warranted because the states' efforts sufficed.
Congressional Republicans also used a budget rider that year to prevent the Department of Interior from writing a rule listing the grouse for protection. The rider has been there ever since, last renewed in December.
Charles Dymock III, a local wildlife videographer, studies a bat identification key in Brittons Neck on May 1, 2023, while state researchers catch bats. Species within the Myotis bat group look and sound remarkably similar, complicating the search for the endangered subgroups on public and private land. Clare Fieseler/Staff
"The rider was kind of a unique way to approach it … but that was the right way to go. When you have big conflicts, the species loses," said Leo Miranda-Castro, a retired regional director of the Southeast office for the wildlife service.
Miranda-Castro, who now works part-time helping to mediate landowner-conservation conflicts, contends that conservation can often be done cheaper and faster without the regulatory red tape of an endangered species listing. What's needed, he said, is for both sides to set aside their distrust and work together on compatible plans, as was done with the sage grouse solution.
But the species has continued to nosedive under that edict.
According to the wildlife bureau's 2022 report, the birds' core habitat is disappearing at a rate of about 1.3 million acres a year. If things don't slow down, half of the species' habitat will be gone by 2032.
“We said at the time that (Congress) was opening a Pandora's box with that rider … and that’s what happened," said Mary Beth Beetham, a legislative director for the nonprofit group Defenders of Wildlife. By eliminating the possibility of an "endangered" listing, Congress stopped the law from holding people accountable for protecting the greater sage grouse, she said.
The other lesson, said Beetham, was that this approach was effective. In this congressional session alone, the Defenders of Wildlife have recorded more than 52 legislative efforts to undermine the Endangered Species Act.
Last summer, the northern long-eared bat become part of that campaign.
Inching into controversy
On May 11, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to overturn the decision to list the northern long-eared bat. Prior to that, there had been little controversy over the insect-loving bat that feasts on pests plaguing the agricultural sector in the 37 states where it is found.
Every Republican senator voted for the resolution, including South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, as did a few Democrats, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The bill’s sponsor said the bat's “endangered” status would put an undue burden on the East Coast’s timber industry.
The rule found support in the U.S. House and among developers. Rock Hill-based Republican Ralph Norman, a successful developer himself, has benefited from forest clear-cutting to build large commercial warehouses. Norman suggested that the Endangered Species Act shouldn’t apply to all animals. And certainly not these bats.
“I see the bald eagle. That makes sense. I see the bears. That makes sense. But long-eared bats? I hope the white-nose syndrome wipes all of them out. We won’t have it to worry about,” Norman said at a committee hearing before a critical vote.
President Joe Biden eventually used his veto power to shut down the legislation and keep long-eared bats protected under the law. But the summer’s battle of bats on Capitol Hill thrust the species into the public eye.
“Watch … just like with the spotted owl, these bats will become public enemy No. 1,” said Rob Young, a geology professor at Western Carolina University who studies coastal forests and marshes in the South.
Bat biologist Jennifer Kindel measures a southeastern bat in a state-run wildlife management area near Brittons Neck on May 1, 2023. Her team wants to know how many endangered bas now live on the coast since mountain populations were wiped out by a deadly fungus. Clare Fieseler/Staff
Searching for a phantom
Emails reviewed by The Post and Courier indicate that, on April 17, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requested that the clearing of forest on the Guggenheim estate cease until the agency and the Army Corps of Engineers could learn more about the presence of northern long-eared bats on the property. The Army Corps had issued a permit to develop the property but now invoked a consultation process under the Endangered Species Act.
Kindel, the bat biologist, was copied on the letter.
The request halted the clear-cutting of 4,000 acres of forest that was making way for 18,000 new homes in a city-size development known as Point Hope. The builders continue building, but only in the 260 acres already cut down.
Kindel said she can’t talk in detail about her work advising federal agencies about long-eared bats thought to live near permitted projects at the coast.
Generally speaking, though, she said she doesn’t have the resources to do the time-intensive work of locating them all — what she called "the hopeful population."
Our science-backed survey approaches are rudimentary, and these coastal bats — because they aren’t hibernating in caves — are good at avoiding detection. Unlike the sage grouse of the Plains, these bats are rarely seen, only sometimes heard, like operatic phantoms of the forest.
Saying with absolute certainty that northern long-eared bats are present or absent from a place seems almost impossible.
According to federal guidelines, to say that a long-eared bat is “present” in an area 123 acres (about 90 football fields) requires scientists spending 10 days at that site, physically catching bats with a two-story net, jimmy-rigged with a pulley system, from dusk to dawn. To say the bats are definitively “absent,” the same must be done.
So far, northern long-eared bats have not been physically caught on the Cainhoy property. But a few years ago, a specialized listening device heard screeches in the adjacent Francis Marion National Forest that scientists believe belong to the species.
“With a newly endangered species that might be present, all you have is uncertainty," said Paul Weiland, an attorney at the California-based law firm Nossman LLP. He said he has represented dozens of local governments and landowners during similar processes.
He has seen the proceedings drag on for much longer than the 90-day time period laid out on paper and, during that wait, he has seen political opposition build against previously uncontroversial projects.
DI Development Company, the lead developer for Point Hope, told fish and wildlife officials last summer that its leaders are “presuming” the bat is on the property instead of going through the time-intensive work of determining that for sure. Information sharing between federal agencies about the development's threat to the bat continues, as mandated by the Endangered Species Act.
"Point Hope is an environmentally responsible development that will make Charleston proud," Matt Sloane, president of company, said in an email to The Post and Courier.
Sloane said the attention on Cainhoy over bats is unwarranted since its new endangered designation will likely affect many landowners east of the Mississippi. He said more than half of Cainhoy's forest, roughly 4,000 acres, will be left intact and a 650-acre nature preserve will sit in the heart of the housing area — two factors the developer says will leave ample habitat for these refugee bats.
Maybe that's enough to mitigate the threat of 18,000 new houses. But the ongoing pause means federal scientists aren't convinced.
For months, the pause at Cainhoy was not public knowledge. When the news broke in September, it generated hundreds of comments online — all in support of the northern long-eared bat. Charleston-based photographer Owen Granata posted, “Thank God those bats are saving the Lowcountry.”
But Kindel’s work shows how much uncertainty still surrounds this battle and where its lines are drawn.
Researchers from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources measure the wing of a Southeastern bat in a state-run wildlife management area near Brittons Neck on May 1, 2023. Clare Fieseler/Staff
Forest phantoms
On June 1, just after midnight in the Woodbury Management Area near Myrtle Beach, Kindel held a southeastern bat. It is a cousin of the northern long-eared bat, in the same genus Myotis. Though in decline, this bat isn’t yet on the endangered species list.
And, said Kindel, it didn't have tell-tale signs of fungal infection — a nose seemingly covered in white powder. After catching roughly a dozen more southeastern bats on this outing, Kindel sighed: “I guess we didn’t get lucky tonight. No long-eareds … maybe next time.”
It's challenging work that takes a special interest. Kindel has trouble hiring people who don’t already have an aversion to bats, which have a stigma as disease carriers. DNR’s bat-surveying work is also hard on the body, requiring people to work the “graveyard shift” in mosquito-ridden areas from April to August. One of her best technicians, she said, had to resign. “He was older, and his body just couldn’t take it.”
After three months and 40,000 acres of public land surveyed, the South Carolina team had netted no northern long-eared bats. But two states away, more survivors of the fungal apocalypse showed up.
“I’ve been aware of the coastal bats of North Carolina. … And then the South Carolina discovery … so it’s been on our minds to go look at our coast, just for the heck of it,” said Nick Sharp, a bat biologist for Alabama’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
And there they were: a male and two pregnant female long-eared bats, in the first coastal location the Alabama scientists looked.
Like in the Carolinas, Alabama’s mountain caves — their traditional home — have been empty for years. Sharp said he had somewhat written the bats off, presuming they had gone extinct within Alabama's state lines.
These endangered creatures aren’t just surviving, they’re breeding, in a thin ribbon of protected coastal forest, sandwiched between bustling Pensacola Beach and the expanding suburbs around Gulf Shores.
“This is the last potential refuge for the species,” said Sharp.
A stand of trees presumed to be habitat for the endangered northern long-eared bat sits on the former Guggenheim estate in Berkeley County, where tree clearing was paused in May 2023 due to a Section 7 consultation under the Endangered Species Act. File/Clare Fieseler/Staff
Saving species or forests?
In early October, Catherine Wannamaker sat on a skiff motoring up the Wando River. The million dollar homes of Daniel Island passed on her left, while up ahead, just off the bow, she pointed: “Wow, see the difference? It’s like stumbling on a national park in the middle of Charleston.”
A half-flooded hammock came into view, where snowy egrets perched. Then a small stand of Palmetto trees appeared, one slightly crooked, one with a few sun-baked palms hanging low. The dead fronds, according to Kindel, are a favorite roosting place for some bats.
Wannamaker is a seasoned environmental lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center. She brought two young lawyers, fresh out of law school, on this boat ride to see the 9,000-acre forest on the Cainhoy peninsula, on the city's outskirts. The two new hires needed to understand this landscape, she said.
The site is at the center of an ongoing lawsuit the center filed in federal court in August 2022 on behalf of three local green groups: the Coastal Conservation League, Charleston Waterkeeper and the South Carolina Wildlife Federation. The lawsuit challenges the developer’s permit, saying it violates U.S. environmental law.
The lawsuit doesn't mention bats. Its main thrust is about climate change.
Clearing the forest and filling in nearly 200 acres of wetlands, said the suit, would make the whole area vulnerable to flooding. Point Hope's design places almost half of the planned housing in the floodplain while displacing over 100 red-cockaded woodpeckers.
Six months after the lawsuit was filed, the northern long-eared bat officially gained “endangered” status, giving environmentalists an unexpected win. It halted forest clearing, giving more time for the lawsuit to move through the courts.
When Young, the Western Carolina professor, learned that it was an obscure section of the Endangered Species Act and not coastal land concerns that ultimately paused Cainhoy's development, he said he couldn't believe it. “Bats and turtles … is that what it takes for us to have sustainable coastal development?"
Looking back, that’s what exactly happened in the Pacific Northwest. The war between environmentalists and loggers started as an argument over land management.
“The spotted owl didn’t enter the fray until at least five years into that argument,” said Baier, the historian. He noted that in the 1980s, the local logging industry had already shrunk, shedding 90 percent of its work force at the same time a new environmental ethic took root, one that recognized old-growth for its special ecological role.
On Dec. 19, the Biden administration moved to conserve even more groves of old-growth trees within national forests due their role in mitigating the West's deadly wildfire risk. In other words, that 1980s forest ethic became a kind of premonition.
The South is entering its own fight for forests to lessen the blows of climate change. Many tracts, like Cainhoy, are formerly logged and far from pristine. Still, they absorb flood waters like a sponge. They let marshes move in.
Descendants of the famous philanthropist Harry Frank Guggenheim, who died in 1971, still own Cainhoy — the largest tract of undeveloped coastal forest in a city that's become a poster child for coastal flooding. Trying to develop that land in recent years has thrust this one family in the spotlight, making them susceptible to political targeting, just like the bat.
That's not fair either, said Weiland, the lawyer who represents developers and local governments in Endangered Species Act disputes. Under the law, landowners who long maintained forest patches where newly endangered species live are suddenly saddled with regulatory hurdles that others avoided, he said.
"If one were to set up a just regulatory system, this wouldn't be it," he said. "And the people that eliminated all the habitat before, they got all the upsides."
Construction continues on new homes on Daniel Island on Sept. 14, 2022. Local advocates are worried about development on Cainhoy peninsula that may resemble the island’s. File/Gavin McIntyre/Staff
This dichotomy seems to be on display when motoring up Nowell Creek. On one side is the forested Cainhoy property; on the other, Daniel Island, full of houses, a specter of what's to come.
Daniel Island's waterfront mansions are within a golf-cart ride of multiple 18-hole courses, all built on deforested land in the 1990s or later. At dusk, boaters can see the lights of the island's Credit One Stadium, which creates a tawny nighttime glow that many bats and forest birds avoid.
Guggenheims once owned this place, too. Their estate, bought with gilded age riches, once encompassed both locations. The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation sold 4,000 acres on Daniel Island to developers in the 1990s. Proceeds went to the foundation, which studies and produces information to counter violence. A member of the Guggenheim family also sold two nearby properties to developers in 1989 and 1992 for a total of $4.9 million. Charleston’s leaders applauded, seeing it as an economic boom and job generator
South Carolina is now America's fastest-growing state in its fastest-growing region, according to new U.S. census data. If Point Hope is built to its full potential, as the Guggenheim descendants have planned, 45,000 more residents may come to live and work there.
Winding through the flooded creeks of Cainhoy, the place is still a visual gift, lush and alive.
Wannamaker noted the flowering fluff forming on the top of spartina marsh grass. It shined golden in the afternoon light.
A few weeks later, those fluff balls became seeds. Large flocks of crows descended there, joining the Lowcountry’s other iconic birds, wood storks and little blue herons, at this rare Charleston spot where the spongey forest-marsh lattice is still untouched.
But it's the things you can't see, little-known bats trying to thrive in a new home, that could actually keep it that way.
Bat biologist Jennifer Kindel checks a Southeastern bat for white-nose syndrome in a state-run wildlife management area near Brittons Neck on May 1, 2023. Many Myotis bats are winding up on the U.S. endangered species list as the deadly disease spreads, causing tensions with landowners. Clare Fieseler/Staff
An earlier version of this story contained an error. The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation sold Daniel Island properties to developers in the 1990s. All profits from the sale went to the foundation, which studies and produces information to counter violence.