Canadian bats facing bleak future

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47969

With Halloween just days away, you’re undoubtedly seeing bat images everywhere, which is kind of perfect since it’s also National Bat Week. Too bad that in the real world, bats are suffering, sick and endangered, while governments can’t get their acts together to save bats from a truly monstrous disease: white-nose syndrome (WNS). Instead of fearing bats this holiday, we should be scared of a world without them.

Care2′s Alicia Graef let us know about the American bats that urgently need federal protection: the northern long-eared bat was hit hard by WNS. Our government hasn’t done anything to stop it, but that doesn’t mean that the disease will stop. After first appearing in New York in 2006, WNS has spread to our neighbors in Canada since 2010, and it’s devastating new bat species in its wake, like a real zombie apocalypse.

As reported in CBC News, WNS has hurt eastern Canada’s little brown bats, northern myotis and tri-coloured bats. In New Brunswick, scientists fear that 99 percent of all little brown bats in the area succumbed to the disease. So far, only 22 bats have been counted in that area. Comparatively, in 2011, scientists could count 7,000 little brown bats.

FULL story at link.

[shenmue]

1. Poor little bats

[longship]

2. Poor Blue Jays. Apparently could not swing their bats.

:nt:

[A Little Weird]

3. It's bleak in the U.S. too

At least the eastern U.S. I'm not sure how far west WNS has spread.