Drew Stokes

Bats are the coolest of all other animals. They are nocturnal,
elusive, mysterious, and challenging to study, so when you do catch one, it is almost like seeing a fairytale animal.”

Announcement

 Field biologist Drew Stokes passed away on May 30th, 2025. Drew had been battling cancer since October of 2024. While this is a huge loss for the bat community, Drew’s passion, knowledge, and dedication for bats has left a legacy through all the people he taught, advised, and inspired. Drew began studying bats professionally nearly 30 years ago, but he first discovered his love for them as a child in England. He would see bats flying around at dusk and would toss rocks up into the air to watch them either dive for it or expertly move away from it.

     For the last 17 years, Drew worked for the San Diego Natural History Museum, with his focus primarily on bats, but he also assisted with herpetology and other projects as needed. Drew’s recent projects included temporarily and safely excluding a colony of Yuma myotis from the Lake Hodges dam for emergency repairs before pupping season and to ensure they got access back after. Besides being a extremely dedicated field biologist, Drew co-authored a paper with USGS (his former employer) that dives into conservation needs for San Diego County bats and which species and locations need the most attention (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0310812).

     Drew’s fingerprints can also be seen all over the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, where he has helped advocate for and given advice about the local bats that roost in and around public places. 17 species have been identified on the grounds, with 10 of 22 bat houses occupied. The Safari Park began working with Project Wildlife to rehabilitate and release bats - sharing the stories on social media, and International Bat Appreciation Day is now an annual celebration, and the Park’s “garage” space has been modified to accommodate bats (it is kind of like a giant bat house!) All this work was inspired by Drew’s love for bats. He was always happy to help ID a bat call, a bat photo, or to take new bat biologists and enthusiasts along for fieldwork. Drew lived for being out in the field and looking for snakes, lizards, and frogs, as well as bats. San Diego, San Diego County, and Drew and anything bat related are completely intertwined. His spirit, passion, knowledge, ideas, and expertise, influenced anything and everything touched by a bat.

     You can read all about San Diego bats in Drew’s words in the San Diego Mammal Atlas (https://sunbeltpublications.com/shop/san-diego-county-mammal-atlas). You can also listen to Drew talk about San Diego bats in this podcast from 2016. (www.podomatic.com/podcasts/pelecanusradio/episodes/2015-10-15T07_51_49-07_00). Drew never wanted to be on TV or to be the center of attention, he just wanted was to help bats which he called “fairytale” creatures. Somehow, I think Drew can still see how much influence he’s had in shaping the lives of bats, and their many supporters around the country through his influence, passion, and the knowledge that he passed on.

     A fund has been created in Drew’s name to benefit California bat conservation through educational materials, and hopefully a scholarship as well, for students interested in bat conservation(https://gofund.me/d05d33fb).

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Memory wall

August 13, 2025

Drew was the most influential, inspiring person in my life. I am lucky to have been able to spend the last two years with him. We bonded over bats, of course, but also just over a love of nature.

All of my favorite memories involve animals in some way. We went to the zoo somewhat often, and there was this one aviary with these yellow birds, they would pluck a piece of grass and then fly up to a bush or tree and weave the grass between the branches. We would just sit in there and watch as it held a branch down with one foot and tucked the blade of grass with their beak, while pulling another branch closer with the other foot. It was SO cool! We would spend WAY too long looking for the vampire crab in the invertebrate house and he always had to go see the waterfall.

One time on a bat adventure, it had recently rained and there were puddles everywhere. These dumb snails somehow kept ending up in the puddles and some were bloating and drowning. He tolerated (and eventually helped) me pluck them all out of the water and place them on dry land.

The excitement on his face when he caught a snake, or the child-like glee when we did a Bioblitz at Cabrillo, and he was crawling through the bushes looking for snakes and lizards.

Here are some pictures of things and places that make me think of Drew.

He was such a genuine, kind, inspirational person. The world is a bit dimmer without him.

Andi Goehrs