PLASTER ROCK — Students at a northwestern New Brunswick school are being sent to other locations for the rest of the school year due to an infestation of endangered bats.
David McTimoney, the superintendent of the Anglophone West School District, wrote Friday that Tobique Valley High School in Plaster Rock, N.B., will be closed while the removal effort of the little brown bat colony is underway.
He says the 134 students from Grades 6 to 12 and the 22 staff will be relocated for the remainder of the year to schools in Plaster Rock and nearby Perth-Andover.
Monday was the students' last day at Tobique Valley High School, with efforts to remove the bats scheduled to begin later this week, and classes to resume at the students' new locations on May 5.
McTimoney said in the email Friday that since March, students and staff "have been very patient and resilient when it comes to attending school in a building that bats also occupy," but added the time has come to "get to the bottom" of the issue.
In a telephone interview on Monday, McTimoney said staff and students started to notice a resurgence in the bat issue last month and it has steadily grown worse.
He said it isn't a case of multiple bats swarming through the hallways, but rather almost daily reports from students and staff of individual bats being spotted, and of custodial staff locating dead bats around the building.
Because the species known as little brown bats is listed as endangered, remediation efforts involve catching the bats and then releasing them, followed up with efforts to locate and seal any small holes where they can return, said the superintendent.
Jamie LeRoy, the president of Onyx Pest Control in Fredericton, said in an interview Monday that removing the bats from an older school building with a large attic is challenging.
"The larger a place is and the older a building is, the harder it is to seal it so that bats can't get in," he said. "If you can picture a crack that you can put the end of your little finger into, a bat can go through that."
LeRoy said the process to eliminate bats involves using a misty spray, which includes detergent, that "smokes" the bats out of the areas they inhabit and encourages them to fly out of the building. This is then followed up with a program to remove their droppings, replace damaged insulation and completely seal off all of the small holes bats might use to re-enter.
Jordi Segers, the national bat health program co-ordinator with the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative — based at the Atlantic Veterinary College — said in an email the little brown bats are an important part of ecosystems, consuming large amounts of insects that are pests to the region's agriculture and forestry.
Due to a bat-specific disease called white-nose syndrome, little brown bat populations have crashed dramatically. During the winter they hibernate underground, typically in caves and mines, and this is when white-nose syndrome affects them, effectively causing dehydration and starvation.
Segers said each spring the bats move to their summer colonies, which may be in trees but also in buildings. He said while they can form large colonies, they are a species that only reproduces slowly, with females giving birth to a single pup each year.
To ensure the pups of the endangered bats are not left inside a sealed-off building, Segers said, "exclusion" efforts should only occur in early spring or late fall — either before pups are born or after they have learned to fly.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 28, 2025.
— By Michael Tutton in Halifax.
The Canadian Press
