I heart bats!

This evening I sat on a rock down by the creek & watched a bat fly around catching dinner. I love bats! They amaze me, like most wildlife. Humans, on the other hand, confound me. The other day at work I had two separate and unrelated people tell me that they did not understand why a bat could stall the progress of the Western Maryland Rail Trail. The issue they were referring to was populations of endangered Indiana and Eastern Small-Footed bats that inhabit the Indigo Tunnel. In fact, after an environmental impact study it was determined that the Indigo Tunnel is the largest known bat refuge in Maryland. The Western Maryland Rail Trail initially was planned to go through the tunnel, but because of the endangered bat populations living inside, the rail trail will now go around the tunnel. To my disbelief, both times, the two separate and unrelated visitors said that the bats had lived somewhere else before the tunnel and they could just find somewhere else to live now. It is that self-centered mentality that has caused the human race to exploit the earth to the point of driving so many species into endangerment due to loss of habitat.
Because I was at work where "the visitor is always right" I could not tell these two separate and unrelated people that they were idiots. So I just looked at them like they were idiots. One of them I think got my point, the other unsurprisingly did not. Both of them were probably a lost cause, but the Indiana and Eastern Small-Footed bats hopefully are not.