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Credit: courtesy of Cal Butchkoski, Pennsylvania Game Commission
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In February 2006 some 40 miles west of Albany, N.Y., a caver photographed hibernating bats with an unusual white substance on their muzzles. He noticed several dead bats. The following winter, bats behaving erratically, bats with white noses and a few hundred dead bats in several caves came to the attention of New York Department of Environmental Conservation biologists, who documented white-nose syndrome in January 2007. Hundreds of thousands of hibernating bats have died since. Biologists with state and federal agencies and organizations across the country are still trying to find the answer to this deadly mystery.
We have found sick, dying and dead bats in unprecedented numbers in and around caves and mines from Vermont to Virginia. In some hibernaculum, 90 to 100 percent of the bats are dying.
While they are in the hibernaculum, affected bats often have white fungus on their muzzles and other parts of their bodies. They may have low body fat. These bats often move to cold parts of the hibernacula, fly during the day and during cold winter weather when the insects they feed upon are not available, and exhibit other uncharacteristic behavior.
Despite the continuing search to find the source of this condition by numerous laboratories and state and federal biologists, the cause of the bat deaths remains unknown. Recent identification of a cold-loving fungus could be a step toward an answer.
State and Service biologists are:
- Winter monitoring of signs of WNS in caves and mines has been completed;
- Service and state biologists are compiling data from the biennial winter count of Indiana bats;
- Bat field work during early summer 2009 includes mist-netting* to determine the presence of bats and monitoring of known maternity colonies (groups of females that raise their young together) of little brown, big brown or Indiana bats. Monitoring can vary from counting bats as they emerge at sunset to attaching radio transmitters and following their roosting and feeding behaviors *(A mist net is a grid of thin nylon strands. Set between two upright poles, it resembles a large volleyball net. Mist-netting poses minimal risk of injury to trapped bats.);
- Service and other federal biologists along with state and academic biologists attended a meeting in May 2009 hosted by Bat Conservation International to discuss potential avenues of research;
- Service, state, U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service biologists met in May 2009 to develop strategies to control the spread and minimize the impacts of WNS. We have initiated a structured decision-making process to identify potential management options that could be implemented as soon as winter 2009-2010. The initial phase of the SDM process is nearing completion, and efforts are now under way to critically evaluate all potential management actions based on the most current scientific information;
- The Service, in conjunction with many partners, is supporting experimental treatment of WNS-affected captive bats with damaged wings;
- The U.S. Geological Survey has initiated a pilot study to determine if WNS can be identified in affected vs. unaffected bats through genetic analyses;
- Service biologists and managers are working with commercial cave operators, caving groups, outing clubs, karst conservancies and others in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, to slow the potential spread of WNS; and
- Service biologists are assisting in developing and distributing new information about WNS (e.g., WNS video at http://www.cavebiota.com/).
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