COLORADO SPRINGS — Are you afraid of bats? Don’t be! They’re very important to our environment.

Bat Week runs from Thursday, Oct. 24 to Oct. 31 in a nationwide effort to raise awareness about bats.

“Since they’re out at night, we’re not seeing them anyway, but they will be roosting in trees, behind tree bark, they could be in your yard just behind the pine bark, or you can find them behind the shutters, maybe in your eves. They’re also in the culverts, we have them at Cave of the Winds,” said April Estep, wildlife biologist at Colorado Parks and Wildlife Southeast Region.

According to CPW, Colorado has 18 different species of bats.

“It’s about 44-percent of the bat species that we have in North America, and it’s less than one-percent of the entire world,” said Estep.

CPW says bats help with pest management.

“It allows us to use less pesticides on the landscape. They eat mosquitoes, beetles, midge, some eat spiders, and we have a palette bat that actually eats scorpions. And they’re also our only flying mammal that we have in the world,” said Estep.

Right now, a lot of Colorado bats are getting ready for hibernation.

CPW and the Fountain Creek Watershed Alliance is holding a Bats and Beers event Thursday at Red Leg Brewing Company from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m..

You’ll be able to build bat boxes for bats to stay in.

“With the three chambers, there’s three quarter inch space in between each one. And if you think about that, that’s pretty small, but we can fit about 300 bats in one box,” said Estep.

Click here to register for the event.

Click here to learn more about Bat Week.