TWS member Scott Johnson given Lifetime Achievement Award

At the 2017 Midwest Bat Working Group meeting this spring, Indiana Chapter of The Wildlife Society member and Chapter Past-President (1993) Scott Johnson was awarded The Dave Redell Lifetime Achievement Award for his achievements related to Midwest bat conservation, management, and research.

Scott Johnson ©TWS Indiana Chapter

Throughout his career Scott’s work has included species restoration, population monitoring and management.  In 30 years with the Indiana Division of Fish and Wildlife, Scott led efforts for the River Otter Restoration Program, studied population dynamics of the Allegheny woodrat, led efforts on winter bat counts and management/protection of hibernacula, conducted field studies of bobcats and was the state’s lead on white-nose syndrome monitoring.

Some of Scott’s accomplishment relating to bats include:

• Helped conduct biennial winter hibernacula surveys from the time he started with DNR to the present.
• Long-term use of speloggers to monitor human visitation during seasonal closure period of caves. (CURRENT)
• Assisted with installation of angle-iron bat gate built at Batwing Cave, which at the time was home to up to 29,000 Indiana bats. (1980’s)
• Data from up to 18 probes in 5 MYSO hibernacula in Indiana were analyzed to determine if roost microclimates are responsible for continued decline of MYSO throughout range. (1990’s)
• Assisted Paul Cryan et al. in multi-state monitoring of bats using video surveillance (infrared and thermal imaging cameras) in Wyandotte Cave. (2010’s)
• Assisted with installation of GateKeeper beam-break system to monitor bat activity at Wyandotte Cave. (2010’s)

This article originally appeared in the Indiana Chapter of The Wildlife Society’s November 2017 newsletter.