What’s Killing Bats? A New National Plan

White nose syndrome is a mysterious disease that has killed more than one million hibernating bats in the Northeast and Canada. WNPR’s Nancy Cohen reports the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just released a proposal for coordinating federal, state and tribal agency work to address the disease.

 

White nose syndrome was first documented in New York state in the winter of 2006. Bats were found with a white fungus coating their , eyes and ears, some of them dead or dying. Since then the disease has been confirmed in 2 Canadian provinces and 12 states—as far south as Tennessee. And at least six bat species have been affected, three of which are endangered.  But scientists don’t fully understand the cause or how to prevent it. Wildlife biologist Jeremy Coleman of the Fish and Wildlife Service says more than 50 groups have been working together to address white nose syndrome on an ad hoc basis. He says the new national plan formalizes efforts to prevent the extinction of native bat species

 

“To study the movement of the disease, where it is and why it’s spreading to the places it is spreading to. We don’t currently know what the ecological impacts of the loss of major portions of our bat population will be, but  we anticipate there will be impacts  to people from the loss of a major nighttime insect predator.”

 

Coleman says with fewer bats feeding on insects there could be  public health or economic impacts. The public is invited to submit comments on the white nose syndrome national plan by December 26th.

For WNPR, I’m Nancy Cohen.