Charlotte Junior Girl Scouts earn Bronze Award with bat boxes

Girl Scout Troop 10 recently completed the Bronze Award, the highest honor for the Junior Scouts age level, said troop leader Joanne Shea.

To earn the award, the scouts built bat boxes for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Park and Recreation department. The boxes have been installed by a bridge at Freedom Park and by the Park Road Montessori playground on the Greenway, Shea said.

The four-chamber bat boxes can house as many as 200 bats. The girls chose to make the boxes because bat habitats in Charlotte are shrinking, and they eat mosquitoes and insects that kill plants and crops, they wrote in a report. Also, they wrote, bat droppings make good fertilizer and help pollinate seeds.

(Photos courtesy Joanne Shea)