Bat plague still stymies researchers

[NeoConsSuck]

Source: TimesUnion.com

ALBANY -- A looming extinction of bats from a spreading fungal disease has federal wildlife officials talking about whether bats should be raised in captivity to prevent a complete disappearance.

Four years after the mysterious White Nose Syndrome was found in a cave outside Albany, more than a million bats in 11 states are dead, and researchers still have no way to stop it, Jeremy Coleman, WNS coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday.

"We are looking at everything. Even the reestablishment of bat populations is being considered, and that could include the captive maintenance and holding of bats, full-on propagation, down to the temporary holding of bat colonies during the winter in some kind of protected bunker," he said.

That such radical steps -- already being done for some amphibians that have disappeared from the wild -- are being discussed stems from the rapid spread of the illness, which is caused by a cold-loving, cave-dwelling white fungus that invades hibernating bats' noses and mouths.



Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Bat-plague-still-stymies-researchers-726464.php

---

First the honeybees, and now bats. Something in the environment is way out of kilter.

[Zorra]

1. Bad news. Bats eat up to a thousand flying insects a night - lots of mosquitoes.

[watrwefitinfor]

2. No bats this year. We have no bats.

They have always lived in some of the old farm buildings. I loved to get up before dawn and watch them scooping up their tasty little morsels on the wing, swooping across the yard and down across the garden.

They used to swarm. Last year they were down to about 5-6. This year, zero. Not one bat have I spotted.

No birds for the last month, either, save the two old mourning doves who have taken up residence in the attic of an old barn. Even my favorite mockingbird, who has been with me year round for years, has pulled a disappearing act. Nobody is singing anymore.

And the mosquitoes are dreadful...

Wat

[caseymoz]

3. Bats getting wiped out has worse implications

Since they are, maybe, the most abundant mammals that there are. If a fungus could wipe them out in a few years, it means a disease can do that to humanity.

Just the worst case scenario there.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

4. what's out of kilter is the human destruction of habitat and diversity

:cry:


Bats, honeybees, frogs and toads....my favorite critters...I don't want to live in a world where all the beauty of nature has been wiped out....

Goddammit, when will we start controlling our own numbers?? When goddammit when?

:cry: