What's going on in Silver City?

The Internet Café in the Silver City Volunteer Fire Department will be closed Thursday for spring break and reopen May 4. Due to spring break, the Silver City Task Force will next meet 6 p.m. April 27 at the fire department.

Library needs bookcases

If anyone has any bookcases to donate, they are needed at the Silver City volunteer library.

Specifically, the library could use two sturdy, wooden bookcases, which would house a collection of Civil War reference books recently donated by the Nevada Civil War Volunteers.

Call Quest Lakes at 847-0742 if you have bookcases to donate. The library will resume normal hours, each Sunday 2-4 p.m., beginning April 30.

Wildlife biologist investigates Silver City mines for bats

Recently, Nevada Department of Wildlife nongame biologist Jenni Jeffers spent two days in Silver City investigating abandoned mines slated for closure.

Abandoned mines are often habitats for bats, and there is now a systematic program of evaluation prior to their closure.

Jeffers donned a hard hat, made sure her flashlights were operating, checked her gas-detection apparatus, and crawled into the small, dark openings of a number of abandoned mines in her search for hibernating bats.

She found Myotis species of bats in most of the tunnels she investigated, and will consider having bat gates put up to protect them.

Jeffers hopes to return this summer to do an evening class with local youth about the value of bats, to demonstrate the use of Anabat, an acoustical-identification device and to explain why bats can die when humans disturb their hibernation areas.

She'll also stress why it's dangerous for people to enter abandoned mines, even with proper training and equipment.

According to Biologist J. Scott Altenbach, a bat surveyor of Western abandoned mines, Nevada's mine-closure program illustrates the impact that abandoned mine closures can have on bat populations.

He says that nearly 3,000 mines were closed by the Nevada Abandoned Mines Land Bureau without any type of wildlife survey.

• Submitted by Quest Lakes.