Texas prison officials have a new plan for a warehouse to house a large colony of bats

Nearly two decades after it was revealed that a colony of bats had taken over one of their warehouses, Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) officials are still looking for ways to encourage the winged creatures to find a new home.

The colony lives in a vacant TDCJ cotton warehouse located across the street from the Huntsville Correctional Unit.

According to Texas Parks and Wildlife, the colony in Huntsville has grown to between 750,000 and 1.25 million bats. Those numbers put the colony just behind its better-known counterparts living under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, home to an estimated 1.5 million bats.

KPRC 2 Investigates reported on this colony in 2018.

Bats have nested in the warehouse since the 1990s, but a fire in the early 2000s destroyed the building's interior, prompting TDCJ to condemn the building.

TDCJ officials learned that the colony had grown exponentially when they attempted to demolish the building in 2009, citing structural concerns.

Bats are protected in their natural habitats, and in 1995, then-Gov. George W. Bush signed a resolution designating the Mexican free-tailed bat as the official flying mammal of Texas.

Since the warehouse is considered the colony's natural habitat, TDCJ must entice the bats to leave the building on their own or else it cannot demolish the building. The demolition also raised concerns about where hundreds of thousands of bats would settle if the entire colony was suddenly evicted from the warehouse.

Texas Parks and Wildlife officials said the majority of the colony consists of a western subspecies known as Mexican free-tailed bats, with 10% of the colony consisting of an eastern subspecies. Mexican free-tailed bats migrate each winter, while their eastern relatives stay put.

“I was here in 2018 and in 2018 they said, 'We've been working on this since 2009.' Here we are in 2024, what is the plan?” asked KPRC 2 investigates Robert Arnold.

“Our new plan with the bat camp is to replace the roof. This will help make the structure a little more structurally sound,” said TDCJ Director of Communications Amanda Hernandez. “Then we can slowly start to cordon off areas of the warehouse so hopefully fewer bats will migrate back there.”

In 2018, TDCJ officials hoped that several newly constructed bat houses would lure the colony out of the warehouse. When we visited the site in October, the bat houses were still empty and the area beneath the 17-foot-tall structures is now used by TDCJ for additional parking.

“Does TDCJ feel like it is living on borrowed time when it comes to the structural integrity of this camp?” Arnold asked.

“I would say there are definitely concerns about the structural integrity of the camp,” Hernandez said.

Since KPRC 2 last visited the area, a fence has been erected around the building to prevent people from walking on the sidewalk in front of the camp. TDCJ continues to work with multiple state agencies and Bat Conservation International to potentially find a new address for the colony.

Bat Conservation International installs signs on the fence surrounding the warehouse to inform viewers of the benefits of having a large colony in their city.

Hernandez said work to replace the warehouse roof will begin in the fall.