Ryan GosWING, a pallid bat from Portland, won the Bureau of Land Management's 2026 Bat Beauty Contest, beating a field that included a hairy-legged vampire bat named Batty White. The win marks the fourth time an Oregon bat has taken the title, per KATU. The agency's own spokesperson called it a dynasty.
Here is the catch worth sitting with: according to Here is Oregon, there was no contest last year because of the 43-day government shutdown. So the streak is four wins across five calendar years — 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026 — not four unbroken seasons. The back-to-back framing is technically true and slightly flattering. Both things can be said in the same breath, and most of the coverage says only the first.
That gap between the headline and the record is this column's whole assignment. A beauty contest for bats is entertainment, in the same register as our astrology coverage — pleasant, lightly competitive, and not to be mistaken for a verdict on anything real. But the pattern is worth reading closely anyway, because the contest is also a conservation message wearing a party dress, and the party dress is doing most of the work. We covered a connected angle in A Two-Week Sauna Blanket Trial, and What the Headline Alone Can Tell Us. We covered a connected angle in A Two-Week Sauna Blanket Trial, and What the Headline Alone Can Tell Us.
What actually happened in the 2026 contest?
The Bureau of Land Management ran the contest during Bat Week, the week leading up to Halloween, in partnership with Bat Conservation International. Voting opened October 24 and ran through the end of the week, and the agency counted more than 3,300 votes across its Facebook, Instagram, and website, according to the BLM's own announcement. Ryan GosWING was announced as the winner on Halloween after a final matchup against Batty White.
The field was genuinely varied. The BLM listed Townsend's big-eared bats, pallid bats, hoary bats, western small-footed bats, and big brown bats among the contestants. ChewBATca, a big brown bat, was billed as possibly eating more than 1,000 insects in a night. Count Frostula, a hoary bat, got the silver-tipped fur treatment. The names are the product. The photographs are the packaging.
Is four wins in a row actually a dynasty?
The record, laid out by Rogue Valley Times and Here is Oregon, reads: Barbara of Lake County in 2022, William ShakespEAR of Butte Falls in 2023, Hoary Potter in 2024, no contest in 2025, and Ryan GosWING now. That is dominance by any reasonable measure. But a dynasty implies continuity, and a year with no contest breaks continuity by definition.
There is also a quieter question about what the streak measures. The BLM counted roughly 3,300 votes total this year. That is a small electorate, and Oregon's wins have come from a state with an engaged public-lands audience and two prior Rogue Valley champions who normalized voting for the home team. The streak may say as much about turnout patterns as about any objective ranking of bat comeliness — a judgment no one has ever defined, which is rather the point of a beauty contest.
Sarah P. Bennett, the BLM spokesperson quoted across the coverage, leaned into the joke herself: "With four wins a row, I think we can confidently call this a dynasty — or a 'cauldron' in the case of bats." A spokesperson riffing on a collective noun is a spokesperson doing her job. It is fair to enjoy the line and still note that the agency benefits from the dynasty framing, which keeps the contest in headlines for a fourth cycle.
Why does the BLM run a bat beauty contest at all?
Because the serious numbers underneath are genuinely large, and cute is the delivery mechanism. The BLM attributes $3 billion in annual pest-control services to American agriculture to bats, and states that a single bat can eat as many as 1,200 mosquitoes in an hour. Pallid bats like GosWING hunt by sound, using oversized ears to listen for insects moving on the ground, and they pollinate cacti and agave. Many bat species depend on caves, abandoned mines, forests, and grasslands the BLM manages, and the agency uses bat-friendly closures on abandoned mines to protect them.
The contest's own copy admits the strategy: creative names and eye-catching photographs, the BLM wrote, transform bats "from spooky symbols into fascinating wildlife ambassadors." That is a communications department describing its own funnel. The skepticism here is not that the message is false — the ecological claims are the agency's and are standard — but that the charm offensive and the conservation case are deliberately fused, and readers should know which part is doing the persuading.
What should a reader actually take from this?
Take the win at face value: an Oregon pallid bat named after a movie star beat a vampire bat with famously fuzzy legs, and 3,300-odd voters decided it. Take the streak with its asterisk: four titles, one skipped year. And take the BLM's practical suggestions at their word, since they are unusually concrete — according to the BLM: plant native flowers, reduce pesticide use, keep noise levels low near roosts, and avoid disturbing bats in their resting spots. The contest ends when the votes are counted. The habitat work does not.
The honest verdict: a well-run piece of public engagement, a real conservation message, and a streak that is impressive rather than unbroken. Celebrate the bat. Read the fine print on the dynasty. Readers following this should also see How to Read Your Astrology Birth Chart, Step by Step.
