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Toll Climbing From Bat-Killing
WNS In North Georgia Bats

 

From Patricia Doyle
4-16-15

 
 
Hello Jeff - Please post all of the White Nose Syndrome reports.  Very serious situation for the bats in the US.  WNS has spread to Iowa bats in two counties, and Tennessee bats and North Georgia bats also have decimated numbers.

Without bats Americans can expect illegal alien imported diseases like Dengue, to spread across the country.  Yellow Fever, West Nile, Chikungunya and Malaria could show up in a town near any one of us.

Time to protect the bats as they protect us.

Patty


Toll Climbing From Bat-Killing WNS

A plague killing Georgia bats has intensified.

When wildlife biologists surveyed caves in North Georgia last month, they found much higher mortality rates than a year ago among bats from a condition called white-nose syndrome, said Trina Morris, a wildlife biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Nongame Conservation Section.

They haven’t yet calculated an overall mortality rate from the caves surveyed, but in some caves the rate was 95 percent, and overall the death rate will be considerably higher than last year’s 36 percent mortality, she said.

The fungus that causes white-nose syndrome needs cold, and scientists had hoped Georgia’s mild winters would slow it down.

“It’s been a pretty depressing winter,” Morris said. “We were hoping the declines won’t be so bad in the South.”

The prospect of losing the great majority of bats is worrisome to wildlife biologists. In some northern states, 90 percent of bats have been killed, federal wildlife scientists have estimated.

“Bats can eat a lot of insects, and they’re really important for pest control on the landscape,” Morris said. “They are a critical part of our ecosystem and we don’t know the implications of losing a large percent of them.”

According to a 2011 U.S. Geological Survey study, bats are worth at least $3 billion a year to American agriculture, with some estimates ranging tens of billions higher.

First spotted in a New York cave in 2006, the fungal disease has since been found in Canada, as far west as Missouri and Wisconsin, and southward in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

Wherever it has spread, it has decimated bat populations, with estimates of more than 6 million killed by white-nose syndrome.

The toll has been so great that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week listed one species of bat formerly common in the eastern United States, the Northern long-eared bat, as “threatened.” That’s one step up from “endangered” — in danger of extinction from human activities.

The bats being killed in Georgia are a different species called the tri-colored bat.

White-nose syndrome first showed up in Georgia in 2013, in bat caves in the far northwestern corner of the state. Surveys in March of last year showed the disease had spread south and east in the state. This year, surveyors found one new cave where the disease had spread, in Floyd County.

But as they see tri-colored bats declining so rapidly, scientists are gearing up to study the bat’s life cycles more closely, and watching to see if the tri-colored bat could be headed in the same direction as the Eastern long-nosed bat — toward extinction.

There’s little research on tri-colored bats because the species has been so common, Morris said. This summer, observers will try to determine where its mating areas are, and where the bats go during the summer.

The tremendous death rates from white-nose syndrome is new, but bats have been in decline for many years here and in other parts of the United States. The reasons are the same ones putting many other kinds of wildlife in peril, mainly habitat loss.

A research team led by a Georgia State University scientist Christopher Cornelison has found a bacteria that emits a volatile chemical that suppresses the fungus. He is experimenting with allowing the chemical (but not the bacteria) to disperse in caves.

But it’s going to be hard to apply any kind of treatment in the wild, Morris said.

The fungus kills bats by keeping them awake during cold winter days when they’re normally in torpor, a state when in which they use little energy. Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey reported earlier this year that infected bats use twice as much energy, and used up twice as much of their fat reserves, as healthy bats.

In the Northeast, mortality rates may have slowed down, but that could be because the bat populations have been so reduced, they don’t as readily come in contact with other bats.

Cavers may have brought the fungus from Europe, where it’s widespread, and may have helped spread it in the United States.

If bats ever bounce back from white-nose syndrome, it won’t be soon. The long-lived mammals produce few offspring, Morris said.

There are things anyone can do to help, Morris said.

“The big thing people can do is to educate people about why bats are important,” Morris said.

Another way is simply to plant native plant species, something that can also help other kinds of wildlife, she said. Native plants are more likely to attract insects that bats can prey upon, as well as butterflies and other pollinators.

Another way to is to volunteer with citizen-science or other projects, such as efforts to learn where bats are in the summer. And another way is to install special bat houses in yards or fields.

“We can all participate,” Morris said. “A little bit helps if a lot of people do it.”

Follow education reporter Lee Shearer at www.facebook.com/LeeShearerABH or https://twitter.com/LeeShearer.

http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2015-04-11/toll-climbing-bat-killing-white-nose-syndrome

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