The lesser long-nosed bat is one of three bat species in the United States that feeds on nectar. One of the species' major subpopulations migrates between the United States and Mexico. They mate and wait out the winter in southern and central Mexico, roosting together by the thousands to keep warm. In the spring, they migrate north to northern Mexico and southern Arizona, giving birth in many-female “maternity caves.

When the species was declared endangered in 1988, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that the bats were down to fewer than a thousand individuals, strewn across only 14 known roosts in the U.S. and Mexico.

In 2018, however, the U.S. and Mexico cooperated to bring the lesser long-nosed bat back from the brink.

Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that there are some 200,000 bats living in at least 75 roosts between the two countries.

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