APRIL FOOLS: Brazilian bat could turn bridge-repair schedule upside down

APRIL FOOLS -- The appearance along the Sarasota and Manatee county coasts of a tiny, rare bat normally found in the deepest Amazon jungle has forced a change in the work plans for crews preparing to renovate the Longboat Pass bridge.

Those changes could mean the drawbridge will remain open for hours on end, bringing long delays and detours of up to 37 miles for traffic leaving or arriving on the north end of Longboat Key.

State zoologists have monitored in recent years the unexpected and largely undocumented northern migration of the Brazilian short-nosed bat (aethalops inconvenius), first spotted in Cuba and also seen flying north through Central America to Mexico’s Yucatan coast.

Zoologists routinely examining and testing guano under the bridge’s metal drawbridge span, in anticipation of $3.8 million in upgrades, were shocked by the find and confirmed their discovery this month. They theorize spring breakers might have introduced the species to the area inadvertently.

Readily available bat netting, used to keep the flying mammals from nesting under bridges during federally protected spring and summer mating season, isn’t effective against the South American species. The foreign bats have nested deep into the girders and support beams of the aging bridge and, by federal law, can’t be disturbed at night, when they’re most active.

“There is no net small enough for morcego de nariz curto Brasileiro,’’ said Emilio De Nome Inventado, a bat researcher from Sao Paulo’s Universidade de Manorwayne.

As a result, the drawbridge span might have to be left open for hours, depending on bat activity and the progress workers have made by the end of their workdays. Daily determinations will be made each day 60 minutes before civil twilight.

It’s the first time a large-scale civil project has been derailed the United States by an 6-ounce animal, De Nome Inventado said.

“We’ll be sending an expert down there to monitor the situation hour by hour when work begins,’’ said Bruce Wayne, a liaison officer working between transportation officials and the Federal Authority of Animals. “If the bridge is up, and we get close to sunset, it’s gonna stay up all night. Nothing we can do.’’

Federal fines for violating the no-bothering-while-mating clause of the Federal Wildlife Preservation Act of 1942 are stiff.

“$50,000 per instance, and that could add up,’’ said Dick Grayson, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of the Interior, adding he’s alerting field offices from coastal Texas to southern California about the bat’s northern migration. “It could be a real emergency down there on the southern border.’’

A ferry system is being considered for pedestrians and bicyclists from Longboat Key’s Linley Street Boat Ramp and Bradenton Beach, which Longboat Key officials are working through with their counterparts in Manatee County.

Auto traffic, though, would be forced to drive south through St. Armands Circle, into Sarasota, north on U.S. 301 into Bradenton, then over the Cortez Bridge.