White Nose Syndrome Kills Bats
Little Brown Bats. Big Brown Bats. Endangered bats. And formerly not-endangered bats. As I mentioned in March, bats are in trouble. Big time, still and worse. We don't know what's going on, but the effects could be catastrophic -- as in NO MORE BATS IN NEW ENGLAND. None. Extirpated. Extinct. Gone.
"Tens of thousands of hibernating bats died this winter in the northeast, and we don't know why. In and around caves and mines in eastern and upstate New York, Vermont, western Massachusetts, and northwestern Connecticut, biologists found sick, dying and dead bats in unprecedented numbers. In just eight of the affected New York caves, mortality appears to range from 80 percent to 100 percent since WNS was first documented at each site, based on winter surveys." (my emphasis). Excerpted from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife notice May 14, 2008
What I find especially interesting -- and alarming -- is that researchers in the field are noting similarities to colony collapse in bees.
'Several biologists have noted similarities between the bat die-offs and the “colony collapse disease” that has devastated honeybee colonies in the United States and elsewhere over the past few years.
Carole Copeyon, an endangered species supervisor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pennsylvania Field Office . . . said the most striking thing reported by beekeepers is that the bees seem to have been affected neurologically, since they exhibit abnormal behavior. Bees leave their hives during the winter (when they should stay home), then do not return. She also cites a report of bees “clinging to the outside of hives [during freezing weather] in February.” That, Copeyon suggests, sounds very similar to the behavior reported for stressed bats leaving their hibernation caves in winter in the Northeast. Among hypotheses that attempt to explain the bee die-offs is a relatively new class of neurotoxic pesticides known as neonicotinoids, which has been used intensively in the past few years.
“There may be no association with what we are seeing in bats,” Copeyon wrote, “but some of the similarities - including the timing of the bee and bat colony collapses and the incidence of highly unusual, maladaptive behavior - raise questions.”
Some suspected causes of white-nose syndrome likely will prove very difficult to confirm and, as noted, the deaths could very well be a culmination of several factors. This obviously is an exceedingly complex problem that could require a major investment of resources to unravel. And time is short. Most experts agree with Hicks that, whatever the cause, this is a crisis that requires immediate and focused attention.' Excerpted from Bat Conservation International, May 14, 2008 article.
I miss "mine." I have seen only one bat thus far this summer, and the Little Brown Bat did not bode well. It was clinging to the bottom of the side of my house not quite a month ago. I moved it to a darker, safer spot, but it didn't seem to be doing well. It disappeared in the night (of it's own volition or not, I don't know), and I haven't seen a one since. My journal tells me that by end of April this time last year there were Brown Bats swooping above my head at dusk. I miss them.
I do not want a New England (let alone a world) without bats.