Wildlife biologists got a surprise this year while searching Nantahala National Forest. Surveying for bats that survived white-nose syndrome, a disease that's killed millions of bats since 2006, they were delighted to find five federally endangered Indiana bats — the first caught in NC in more than a decade.

The team from the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, US Forest Service, and Brown Environmental 13 had been netting little brown bats in Graham County when these tiny, pink-lipped fliers turned up instead.

“It was a surprise for sure and was so fulfilling after spending a decade on surveys that didn’t result in Indiana bat captures," said NCWRC bat biologist Katherine Etchison. "We always hope we’re going to catch this species, and we put in the work to catch them, but they’re just so rare nowadays.”

Two radio-tagged bats led researchers to a maternity roost in a dead hemlock in the Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness, where 24 bats flew out at dusk.

Indiana bats have been federally endangered since 1967 and were already scarce before white-nose syndrome hit NC mountain bats hard in the early 2010s. The find gives biologists a rare chance to study how this fragile colony is holding on — and they're already planning follow-up monitoring to discover more.