Racing fans visiting "The Tricky Triangle" at Long Pond next summer may notice some odd structures mounted on poles around the expansive facility. Most will be surprised to learn about how these elongated black boxes help bats and the recycled materials with which they were built.

Many cave bat species have become imperiled as a result of white-nose syndrome, so whenever new summer housing is made available to bats, it's always a plus for the resource. Given their ecological importance, bats need every break they can get nowadays. Some cave bat species have declined more than 90 percent over the past 10 years as a result of WNS.Pocono Raceway President and CEO Brandon Igdalsky; Sen. Mario Scavello, R-40; state Rep. Keith Gillespie, R-42; and Game Commission Executive Director Matt Hough were on hand recently to recognize an innovative bat house initiative during an interactive session at the raceway's 25-acre solar farm.A partnership formed between Pocono Raceway, Team Chevy, NASCAR and the Pennsylvania Game Commission resulted in six bat houses recently being placed around the raceway property. Nine others were donated to the Pennsylvania Game Commission for future use throughout the state.The houses were built in 2015 by young members of the Pocono Raceway Kids Club sponsored by Pocono Medical Center in conjunction with the NASCAR Green Program. The houses will provide summer roosting for bats. Each house can accommodate over 150 bats.The bat houses were developed by General Motors waste reduction manager John Bradburn, with guidance from Bat Conservation International and the Organization for Bat Conservation. Bradburn went to work designing and building bat houses from Chevrolet Volt battery covers. To date, more than 450 of these boxes were installed at GM facilities and on private and public lands throughout the United States.The bat boxes are to provide summer roosts. Each passing year, the need to artificially create summer roosting habitat becomes more important.The bat boxes at Pocono Raceway were constructed using repurposed materials that are difficult to recycle. The Chevy Volt battery cover creates an outer shell, scrap circuit trays from SUV and truck engine control modules provide baffles to increase surface area, and wood from industrial pallets offer structural support. The original design has subsequently been modified and used as nesting structures for ducks and other wildlife throughout the globe."White-nose syndrome is caused by a fungus that weakens and kills hibernating bats in caves during the winter," Game Commission Northeast Region Diversity Biologist Rich Fritsky said. "The placement of bat boxes is an ideal way to reduce stress for female bats seeking to establish a nursery colony in the summer, and they also serve as a valuable educational tool."Young bats are born blind and helpless. They are nursed by the adult females and are self-sufficient at six weeks, when they are nearly adult size. Most species bear a single pup and have only one per year. To counterbalance their low reproductive rate, bats are long-lived and may reach 30 years of age.Bats are an important component of a healthy ecosystem and help control mosquito and crop-destroying insect populations. A little brown bat is capable of catching 600 insects per hour and a nursing female may eat her own body weight in insects nightly. A colony of one hundred little brown bats can consume more than one quarter of a million mosquitoes in an evening."When Pocono Raceway first presented this project to us over a year ago, we were interested immediately," admitted Hough. "Bats can never have too many friends."Most of Pennsylvania's bats are hibernating in caves by the time October draws to a close. Their body temperatures falls to just above freezing and their heart rates and respirations drop dramatically in an effort to save precious energy.Female bats emerging from hibernation next spring will immediately start looking for a suitable place to establish a maternal colony. Some will need to look no further than the Pocono Raceway.