Saturday - May 21, 2011

One Bat, No Moon

I was out on the back balcony enjoying the bit of sunshine we’re having today. Actual spring, yahoo!! I looked down at the neighbor’s garden patio below us, and saw movement. There was a little brown bat out in the day time, crawling around. He didn’t seem to be injured, and managed his walkabout pretty easily. By the time I’d watched him for a couple minutes and had the idea of taking a picture, he’d crawled under a bush.

Bats out in the daytime? Made me wonder about rabies. So I Googled it up, and found out that New Jersey brown bats have been suffering from a terrible disease called White Nose Syndrome. It’s a fungus. This little fellow was quite hard to see, because he’s almost the same color as the stonework and the soil. But every once in a while he’d open out a wing and give it a shake. For all I know he was just water logged from all the rain and was trying to dry out a little.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has detailed a national plan to combat a fungus that has killed more than 1 million bats, including tens of thousands in New Jersey.

The disease, known as white-nose syndrome, is caused by fungus that appears to affect wing and tail membranes in many species of bats. It has spread to bats in 18 states and four Canadian provinces.

In unveiling the plan Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said it will provide a road map for the more than 100 federal, state and tribal agencies and scientific researchers who are tracking the disease and trying to combat it.

“The plan pretty much lays out a blueprint for the work that has been done and it ... lays out what is needed to be done,” said biologist Mick Valent of the state’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program. “It’s a framework.”

Since it was first detected outside Albany, N.Y., in 2006, the disease has been found in bats along the Eastern Seaboard and has spread inland to Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. The fungus also has been found in Oklahoma and Missouri, although no bats are known to have died from it in those states.

The rapid spread of the disease has concerned many ecologists because of the critical role bats play in maintaining healthy ecosystems, as well as in agricultural systems.

White-nose syndrome has hit New Jersey’s bat population especially hard, Valent said. Before it was detected in the state in January 2009, about 27,000 bats of various species gathered each fall to hibernate in the Hibernia Mine in Rockaway. The next spring, there were only 1,715 bats left at the mine, a mortality rate of more than 90 percent.

Scientists are not certain how the disease is transmitted or even how it kills. The fungus grows on bats’ noses, wings and ears and it may irritate those membranes, causing the animals to wake often during hibernation and thus burn so much energy they starve to death before spring. Other evidence suggests the fungus directly damages the wings, which are important for bats’ water balance and blood pressure.

The disease does not affect humans, officials said. However, the fungus can be spread by people’s footwear. Many caves on federal land have been closed to the public to try to stem the spread of the fungus. Officials said it was important for people to clean their shoes before and after they enter caves.

The announcement of a national effort to combat the disease was welcomed by New Jersey environmentalists who are seeking a solution to a devastating problem.

“There should be some kind of national plan because if every state is doing its own thing, it’s kind of chaotic,” said Jackie Kashmer of the New Jersey Bat Sanctuary in Alexandria Township. “Having a central agency overseeing the entire project could only be a good thing, to see what works and what doesn’t work.”

Alexandria Township is just a couple miles to the west of us here. Hmm, I wonder if we have a bat nest up under the eaves? I did see a woman out on the hill behind us with a camera yesterday at dusk. She was taking pictures of our roof. I figured she was just strange. Hope the little bat dude is Ok.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/21/2011 at 11:37 AM   
Filed Under: • Animals •  
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