By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice
The scrutiny hasn’t faded because the funding didn’t stop at a single lab. NIH records show CSU’s bat research support extending into overseas field work in Bangladesh, where a separate NIH award to EcoHealth Alliance also played a role—a convergence that has kept lawmakers focused on how these projects are monitored and connected.
Congress is demanding more transparency from the NIH over bat research grants tied to Colorado State University, asking, “How many millions of tax dollars is NIH giving to live bat research and why?”
In a Jan. 12, 2026 letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, Sen. Joni Ernst and Rep. Paul Gosar called on the agency to cancel remaining funding tied to CSU bat research and to produce a full accounting of NIH-funded bat research dating back to 2017.
It was the second time in less than a year that Congress stepped in, giving NIH until Feb. 28 to respond.
What Congress wants from NIH by Feb. 28
In the Jan. letter, Ernst and Gosar asked NIH to immediately cancel over $3 million in remaining funding tied to CSU bat research projects and to produce a comprehensive list of all NIH-funded bat research across federal and academic institutions.
“Risky research with minimal benefit to the health of the American people, and with a great risk of causing another pandemic, should be done only after an extremely intensive safety review and only under strict oversight, if done at all,” the lawmakers wrote.
Their demand is rooted not only in the existence of the CSU projects but in their scale and timing.
Some of the first monies were approved during the height of COVID, when Anthony Fauci was still at the helm of NIAID and EcoHealth Alliance was part of the research effort.
After the DHS barred EcoHealth Alliance from federal funding, CSU said it followed direction from its federal research partners and suspended its subcontract with the nonprofit.
EcoHealth Alliance has since closed and launched a successor nonprofit, Nature.Health.Global, according to its founder in an April 2025 press release, and CSU is no longer collaborating with the group on the bat research cited by Congress.
Three NIH grants and why all are under scrutiny
The congressional letters point to two separate NIH awards connected to CSU, each with a different purpose.
The earliest award, approved in 2021 through NIH’s Office of the Director, wasn’t about experiments. It funded construction of a bat research facility at CSU, including a vivarium designed to breed and maintain bats for infectious disease research.
NIH records describe this award as funding the construction of a bat research facility at CSU designed to breed and maintain bats for zoonotic disease study.
A second award followed in July 2025, when NIH approved a separate research grant focused on bat immune responses. That project centers on how bats’ immune systems respond to viral infection, including the role of T cells in controlling viruses that can be dangerous to humans. The work is intended to help explain how bats carry viruses without becoming sick themselves.
NIH project documents describe this award as studying adaptive immune responses in bats to better understand how viral infections are controlled without disease.
A third award followed in September 2025, and it wasn’t about buildings. It funded the work behind the scenes—bringing bats from Bangladesh to CSU, setting up breeding colonies and creating the cells and samples other scientists rely on to study how viruses behave in bats.
The public record does not spell out whether bats are screened and cleared of infection before being shipped to CSU, or whether experimental infection studies begin only after they arrive.
NIH project documents describe the CSU award as a resource effort to breed bats and develop lab materials for studying how viruses behave in bat hosts.
Federal spending records show that the NIAID cooperative agreement supporting CSU’s bat resource project began obligating funds in late 2023 and runs through August 2028.
How CSU originally framed the project
In Oct. 2021 EcoHealth Alliance was a subcontractor of CSU when the university announced the award.
Meanwhile, EcoHealth Alliance’s other work was under the microscope.
NIH leadership told Congress that same month the bat coronavirus work tied to EcoHealth was not closely related to the virus behind COVID-19. But they also said EcoHealth “failed to report this finding right away, as was required by the terms of the grant” and gave five days to submit unpublished data from experiments and work, saying also that “additional compliance efforts continue.”
The nonprofit was later cited repeatedly in a 2023 GAO report that examined oversight failures tied to Chinese subrecipients, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
This GAO graphic traces the path of NIH and USAID research dollars as they moved through U.S. institutions and on to Chinese research entities from 2014 to 2021.
That history helps explain why Congress is taking a second look at funding decisions made before those oversight problems came to light.
The GAO report does not fault every institution that worked with EcoHealth Alliance, but it does spell out why EcoHealth’s handling of other NIH-funded projects has sharpened the case for stronger oversight.
In its own announcement, CSU framed their project as a controlled effort to study how zoonotic diseases spread, with COVID-19 shaping the work. The university said the facility would be completed by 2025 and include added training and biosafety controls.
That framing is now being tested.
The 2025 funding that reignited scrutiny
NIH’s approval of additional CSU funding in 2025 pushed the projects back into the national spotlight.
The NY Post reported last week that a Sept. 15, 2025 funding action reignited congressional scrutiny, with Ernst and Gosar calling for remaining funds to be halted. An HHS spokesperson said the bats involved are pathogen free and that federal oversight is taken seriously.
The rhetoric vs the record
The congressional push has played out alongside sharp criticism from advocacy groups opposed to federal funding for animal research.
The White Coat Waste Project has helped fuel the public debate by circulating blog posts and social media commentary that question the scope and oversight of CSU’s bat research, with some of that material gaining traction on X.
NIH project records and peer-reviewed studies paint a more varied picture, showing work that ranges from building facilities and research tools to field-based studies examining how viruses spill over from animals to people.
The Bangladesh study linked to the CSU grant
NIH funding connected to the CSU bat research program has also supported work conducted outside the laboratory.
An Oct. 2025 study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases focused on everyday life in Bangladesh—where people, livestock and bats often share space, and where those interactions can create opportunities for viruses to spill over to humans.
The work didn’t take place in a lab. Researchers were out in rural Bangladesh, watching how bats, livestock and people move through the same spaces—and where those everyday crossings can open the door to infection.
Much of the focus was on Nipah virus, which has caused outbreaks there before, and on bats’ ability to carry SARS-related coronaviruses without getting sick.
Bats feed on fruits like figs, banyan, mango and lychee in villages and farming areas. Shared fruit—especially when it’s been partially eaten or contaminated by bats—can become a route for infection.
The study’s funding disclosures list support from the CSU’s same NIH cooperative agreement now under congressional scrutiny.
The same paper also lists funding from a separate NIH to EcoHealth Alliance, which received its award notice on Sept. 15, 2023, revealing how different NIH-funded projects have overlapped in overseas bat research.
NIH records show a separate grant to EcoHealth Alliance studying how Nipah virus spreads between bats and people in Bangladesh.
What Congress is still waiting to hear
The paper trail has grown, but it has not resolved several central questions.
Lawmakers want to know whether remaining funds will be released or canceled, where experimental infection studies involving live bats actually occur—and how NIH monitors the use of bats and biological materials after they leave CSU.
Ernst and Gosar are also pressing NIH to provide a clearer accounting of how the cooperative agreement’s funding is being used, including what supports overseas field work and what goes toward maintaining research resources.
Asked about the letter, the NIH told RMV it has received the request and plans to respond directly to lawmakers. The agency added that the grant cited in the letter involves pathogen-free bats.
CSU was asked to provide updated information on the status of the bat research facility, current funding activity and safety protocols, as well as clarification on how materials produced at the facility are used by external collaborators. The university did not respond to RMV’s request for comment by publication time.
The post-pandemic debate that isn’t going away
Lawmakers have put NIH on the clock and signaled they are not backing off. What the agency does next will set the tone for how bat research is handled going forward.
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