Hally & Benjamin: The People Behind the Bats
We're Hally Cokenias and Benjamin Largent and we love bats. We love other things too, but mostly bats.
Arizona is home to 28 species of bats that are spread throughout the state. Bats are key pollinators for cactus and agave and provide a wide range of pest control. The USGS states that bats save the agricultural industry billions of dollars per year. Around the world, bats are important pollinators and seed dispersers responsible for reforestation. Bats help to reduce dangerous mosquito populations and one bat in Arizona even eats scorpions! We need bats and bats need us.
Several years ago, Hally was looking for a place to volunteer with bats. It turned out that there wasn’t a bat rescue in Arizona and only a small handful of rehabbers. Arizona needed a bat rescue, so we started one. We worked to learn everything we could about bats and got training and hands-on experience from many different sources. Hally got licensed from Arizona Game & Fish to rehabilitate bats in 2021 and Arizona Bat Rescue was born.
Arizona Bat Rescue takes in injured, ill, orphaned and displaced bats. Our mission is to give bats the specialized care and support they need to rest, heal, and get back to the wild. We also strive to teach everyone we can about how amazing (and adorable) bats are and all the ways people benefit from living with them. We are the only bat-dedicated rescue in Arizona and have helped hundreds of bats to date.
Arizona Bat Rescue is a Non-profit, 501c3 charitable organization (EIN 93-1370547). We operate on private donations and do not receive any money from Federal or State grants.
When we aren't doing batty things, we're playing Pokémon and Animal Crossing, hanging with our cats, and collecting those little dressed up birds from Target.