Bats Dying in Unprecedented Numbers

A mysterious affliction, which has been dubbed “white nose syndrome”, thought to be responsible for the death of up to 11,000 bats in New York during the winter of 2007, seems to be spreading at an alarming rate, having now been identified in Vermont. While researchers believe there is no immediate health threat to humans, the bat deaths could have serious economic implications.

Bats feed on insects that can damage dozens of crops, including wheat and apples. Michael Gannon, a biology professor at Penn State University’s Altoona campus who specializes in bats said, “Bats are major predators of night-flying insects. Bats are multi-million-dollar insect-control agents in the U.S.” Gannon concluded that “this could lead to a very large insect problem.”

Craig Stihler, a wildlife biologist specializing in endangered species for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources said, “A healthy bat eats half its body weight in insects every night it feeds. They’re also the basis for whole ecosystems within caves. They’re the ones bringing in the nutrients.”

With most bats living 10 to 20 years, and mothers typically giving birth to only one pup each year, decimated populations would take many years to recover.

Alan Hicks, a wildlife biologist with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said the infected bats exhibit a white fungus, named fusarium, around their noses. This fungus was first found among hibernating bats in January 2007 in the hills of Albany, New York, when a cave explorer saw an unusual number of bat carcasses around the mouth of a cave.

Less than a month later, people from the area were reporting bats flying outside in the middle of the day. “We didn’t know anything other than bats were coming out and they were just dying on the landscape” said Hicks. “They were crashing into snow banks, crawling into wood piles and dying.”

It is unclear whether the fungus around the bats’ noses is a cause or a symptom. Beth Buckles, a veterinary pathologist at Cornell University, said that it may be a sign the bats are too sick to groom themselves. The deaths could be caused by a virus, bacteria, or a reaction to some toxin or other environmental factor. Whatever the cause, the afflicted bats are using up their winter stores of fat before hibernation ends in the spring, and appear to be starving.

Since the afflicted bats die slowly, the death counts for this winter are not in yet. But Hicks said there are 200,000 or more bats hibernating in caves where white nose has been detected.

Hicks has enlisted experts from around the country to find the cause and says he fears a “catastrophic collapse of the region’s bat population”. In a report, Hicks cautioned that he and his colleagues were “one survey short of saying that every substantial collection of wintering bats in the state (New York) is infected.”

Hicks surmised that the problem could have been introduced by a cave explorer in the Albany caves and that it spread from there saying, “It could have been some caver in Tanzania with a little mud on his boot and a week later he’s in a cave in New York.”

New York officials have asked people to stay out of the bat caves in case humans are indeed spreading the problem and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is asking people not to enter caves with clothing or gear used in any New York or Vermont cave within the past two years.

Two caves in Vermont have revealed the disease. The first was the Morris Cave in Danby, and most recently, the Aeolus Cave in Dorset, which is home to the federally protected Indiana bat. “The endangered bats are colonial; they hibernate in huge groups or colonies in the hundred, if not thousands. And this very contagious disease is affecting these sites,” said Mollie Matteson of the Center for Biological Diversity, a national environmental group with an office in Vermont.

Matteson’s group, along with two other regional environmental groups, has petitioned the federal government to increase emergency funding to address the problem, and to make a plan to deal with the crisis. They have also asked for emergency rule-making to close known bat caves to the public. “The threats to endangered bats from white-nose syndrome are severe, widespread and immediate, and failure to undertake instant action could cause these species to go extinct,” the petition stated.

So far, whatever is infecting and killing multitudes of bats in New York and Vermont has not made its way to Pennsylvania, West Virginia nor Ohio. Nevertheless wildlife biologists in these states are checking their caves just to make sure.

According to endangered mammal specialist Greg Turner, Pennsylvania has more than 5,000 mines and more than 1,000 caves that could support hibernating bats. “So far, Pennsylvania appears to be clean,” said Turner.

Turner said that Pennsylvania officials might ban people from entering where bats hibernate. For years, the state has requested that people avoid going underground during the winter months so that bats can hibernate in peace.

New Jersey officials have likewise asked cavers to stay out of places with hibernating bats. And federal officials are urging people NOT to go into caves to look for bats with the white fungus.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ask that if you observe a hibernating bat with a white muzzle or other white, fungus-like patches you:

• DO NOT TOUCH any bats, living or dead.
• Take photographs of the bat or bats.
• Exit the cave immediately and avoid contact with other bats. DO NOT enter other caves without first decontaminating clothing and gear.
• Contact your states game officials or the nearest U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field office to report your observations.
• Report dead bats found outdoors or unusual numbers of bats outside during cold weather, especially near a cave or mine where bats hibernate.