White Nose Syndrome Reaches MA Bat Populations- Mortality Rate As High As 97% [View All]

[hatrack]

A mysterious and deadly sickness that has killed off thousands of bats in New York has now been discovered in two Western Massachusetts mines. Researchers say they expect to find more affected wintering bat populations as they lead expeditions into dark caves and mines in the Northeast over coming weeks. They predict that hundreds of thousands of the furry creatures will be wiped out before the end of winter.

The illness - known as white nose syndrome, because some afflicted bats have a white fungus on their noses - does not appear to pose any risk to people, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service is asking the public to stay out of caves and mines in the Northeast because humans may be inadvertently transmitting the sickness to bats. "No one has a clue what is going on," said Tom French, assistant director of the natural heritage and endangered species program of the Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife, who helped find sick bats in Massachusetts.

As French and other researchers parked their cars near the Chester mines last Friday, they saw several bats, which normally hibernate all winter, flying outside in daylight. Others were found dead nearby, frozen onto houses, in tree branches, and in the snow. Far larger numbers were behaving strangely inside the mines, clustering near the entrance, instead of hibernating deeper in it. Bats fill an extraordinarily important ecological niche. In New England, they eat insects that can infest crops and pester people. There are nine bat species in New England, and researchers say populations probably number in the hundreds of thousands.

Bats can live 25 years or more and generally give birth to one offspring a year, raising scientists' concerns that the illness could devastate the region's bat populations. Mortality has reached as high as 97 percent in some caves. In one New York cave last year, bat populations crashed from 1,300 animals to 38.

EDIT

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/02/21/bat_sickness_reaches_mines_in_western_massachusetts/

EDIT

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/02/21/bat_sickness_reaches_mines_in_western_massachusetts/