[Community_garden] Boston Globe: Bat Sickness Reaches Mines in Western MA

[Alliums]

Hi, Folks!

 

Anyone know anything more about this?  We have lots of bats around our
community garden and I'd hate to lose them. Supposedly, this has been all
over NPR, but I missed it until another list picked this up.

 

Dorene

 

Dorene Pasekoff, Coordinator

St. John's United Church of Christ Organic Community Garden and Labyrinth

 

A mission of 

St. John's United Church of Christ, 315 Gay Street, Phoenixville, PA  19460

****************************************************************************
************************8

 

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

 


Bat sickness reaches mines in Western Massachusetts


Illness appears not to pose human risk


By Beth Daley, Globe Staff  |  February 21, 2008

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.

Scientists say they believe that most bat species are vulnerable, but only
four species have been found with the syndrome: little brown bats, Northern
long-eared, Eastern pipistrelle, and the federally endangered Indiana bat.

The disease was first discovered in a cave near Albany in January 2007 and
was soon found in three more caves within seven miles. By last March, New
York officials determined that as many as 11,000 bats had died.

This year, scientists found the disease in the original four caves, as well
as in many more caves and mines within about a 150-mile radius, housing
roughly 500,000 bats. Bats in Aeolus Cave in Dorset, Vt., were discovered
with white nose syndrome last week. Two days ago, officials from The Nature
Conservancy found bats with the syndrome in a Hague, N.Y., mine where about
185,000 bats are believed to hibernate.

Researchers have not found enormous numbers of dead bats yet, but say that,
based on a smaller outbreak of the disease in New York last year, the
animals will probably start dying by the thousands next month. "We just
don't know how this is going to play out elsewhere" in the country, said
Alan Hicks, a bat specialist with the New York Department of Environmental
Conservation.

Researchers from Virginia to New Hampshire are examining mines and caves for
evidence of the syndrome. Meanwhile, about 15 university, government, and
private labs are attempting to diagnose the sickness.

Researchers know that the animals get the white fungus, but are unsure if it
is a cause or a result of the disease. They also know that the animals are
starving; the dead ones have no fat on them. Pathology labs have said that
some of the animals also seem to have pneumonia-like symptoms.

"Were they fighting off a flu or a cold or some unknown illness that
weakened them before they went into hibernation?," said Susi von Oettingen,
an endangered species biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. "Is
it a disease? Something else? We don't know how it's transmitted."

Scientists say they are particularly concerned that bats may be transmitting
the sickness to each other, because bats of many species hibernate in the
same place before dispersing to their maternity roosts in the spring. From
there, they could travel 200 or more miles for the summer, potentially
spreading the disease further.

Massachusetts doesn't have large numbers of wintering bats, but the majority
of them live in the Chester mines. One mine has more than 7,000 bats, and
the other about 900.

Last week, homeowners near the mines contacted the US Fish and Wildlife
Service to tell them of strange bat behavior. The service and French's
office dispatched the team and found afflicted bats in two mines. Bats in a
third mine nearby will probably be hit with the syndrome soon, Oettingen
said, because bats travel between the mines.

MassWildlife officials visited two other mines in Rowe this week that do not
appear to be affected.

Caving groups have pitched in to help scientists, agreeing to avoid caving
until scientists figure out what is going on. Some are also entering caves
with scientists to identify afflicted bats. When they enter the mines,
scientists use respirators and dress in plastic suits that are
decontaminated afterward to ensure they are not carrying white nose syndrome
with them.

Scientists are asking the public to contact state environmental officials if
they see bats behaving strangely, such as flying in the daytime.

"We are not getting close to an answer," said von Oettingen. "We just have
more questions."

Beth Daley can be reached by email at bdaley at globe.com. 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20080221/9e74e674/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 49 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20080221/9e74e674/attachment.gif