(Host) Bats in New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts are dying this winter by the thousands. A mysterious illness called White Nose Syndrome is affecting half a million bats, and scientists worry this may be just the tip of the iceberg. VPR’s Jane Lindholm has more.
(Lindholm) At Aeolus Cave, in East Dorset, Vermont Fish and Wildlife bat biologist Scott Darling picks up a small crumpled bat that has collapsed in the snow outside the cave’s entrance.
(Darling) "Northern Long-eared. I can tell you that it’s good that it’s biting. But you can feel, it doesn’t have the fat on it at all. (There’s nothing to it.)"
(Lindholm) Aeolus Cave is New England’s largest over-wintering area, or hibernacula: 23,000 bats spend the winter huddled inside. On this day in early March, hundreds of bats are roosting near the mouth of the cave or flying up from its depths. It’s unusual behavior for this time of year, and very troubling to Scott Darling.
(Darling) "That’s an awfully interesting and pretty sight to some of us, but it is wrong. They shouldn’t be doing that. And these are clearly bats that have been affected by the White Nose Syndrome."
(Lindholm) Scientists are baffled by the situation. Bats that contract the illness appear to be dying of starvation. They emerge from their slumber too skinny and too early and seem to be emerging to look for food and water. Some of them have a white fungus around their noses. At Aeolus, the entrance to the gated cave is littered with dead bats. Currently no one knows what’s causing the disease, how it’s spread, or even what it is.
(von Oettingen) "It’s just the ultimate mystery for a wildlife biologist, but hopefully not the ultimate tragedy."
(Lindholm) Susi von Oettingen is an endangered species biologist for the US fish and wildlife service. She says at the caves near Albany, New York, where the illness was first documented last winter, mortality rates were over 90 percent. And the disease continues to spread.
(Von Oettingen) "This has never been documented for bats ever, this type of a die-off. I mean we’re looking at a total of, that we know of, 500,000 bats that are affected. My gosh, if you lose 90 percent of that that is a huge amount of bats. And I think locally, you are going to notice it here. People just aren’t going to see as many bats out in the evening."
(Lindholm) Farmers and gardeners may also notice a significant increase in the number of bugs chowing down on their crops this summer. Bats can eat half their weight in insects every night, and a drop in the bat population likely means an increase in the bug population.
Scott Darling says the *long term affects of a mass die-off on our ecosystem may not be immediately apparent.
(Darling) "They’re predators of forest pests, they’re predators of agricultural pests, and we perhaps are just going to be living in an ecological experiment in the next couple of years about what *was the importance of these bats."
(Lindholm) Right now it’s a race against time. Scientists in Vermont are trying to prevent the spread of the illness to other caves and mines by asking cavers to stay out until spring. And they’re hoping to learn more about the illness by radio-tagging live bats and sending dead specimens off to labs to be analyzed. Until they learn how to stop White Nose Syndrome, there’s little to be optimistic about.
(Darling) "I’ve been working awfully hard on bats for six, seven years now, and trying to do an awful lot towards their conservation. And to have something like this happen so quickly, so dramatically, with such potential impact on bat populations, it’s disconcerting to say the least."
For VPR News, I’m Jane Lindholm in East Dorset.