Our Poor Bats.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/792484--bat-killer-moves-into-ontario?bn=1

Bat killer moves into Ontario
Mysterious fungus decimated U.S. bat populations

Published On Thu Apr 08 2010 Brendan Kennedy Staff Reporter

The future looks bleak for Ontario’s bats.

A lethal fungus that decimated populations of the winged critters in the Northeastern U.S. was discovered in Ontario last month, and researchers fear it will have the same devastating effect here.

“Right now nobody has any way of stopping it,” says Brock Fenton, a biology professor at the University of Western Ontario and Canada’s leading bat expert. “It’s frightening.”

The fungus itself doesn’t kill bats, but scientists believe it’s linked to what they call white nose syndrome, named for the ring of white fungus — which can appear as a powdery substance — often found around the bats’ nostrils and muzzle.

The disease disturbs their hibernation patterns, causing them to wake earlier than they should. Once up, the bats can’t find the moths and mosquitoes that usually fill their bellies. After expending their limited stored energy, they starve to death.

Fenton said the fungus is like “the selfish caver from hell,” referring to recreational cave explorers who inadvertently disturb bats during hibernation.

White nose syndrome was first discovered in bats in Albany, N.Y., in the winter of 2006, and has since spread to 11 states, from New Hampshire to Tennessee. The disease typically kills between 80 and 99 per cent of bats within a single hibernacula, or place of hibernation.

More than a million bats have died of the disease in the U.S., leading a group of U.S. wildlife scientists to write that it “has caused the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in recorded history.”

“If the spread of WNS is not slowed or halted, further losses could lead to the extinction of entire species,” reads the consensus statement from a white nose syndrome conference held last year in Texas.

There is no known health risk to humans, but as a natural pest controller — bats are a primary predator of night-flying insects and can eat up to three times their body weight nightly — the consequences for forestry and agriculture could be severe if their populations are significantly reduced, some researchers warn.

Canadian researchers knew for years the disease was coming, but the first case was confirmed only a few weeks ago at an abandoned mine in the Bancroft-Minden area, west of Ottawa. Since then the fungus has been discovered in Peterborough, Hastings, Grey and Renfrew counties, and in Kirkland Lake.

Only a small number have died of the disease in Ontario, but researchers are preparing for a widespread “die-off” in the next few years, particularly among the Little Brown Bat species.

U.S. researchers are working on ways to inoculate bats, but so far there is no treatment or cure.

Ontario’s natural resources ministry is monitoring the disease with the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre and trying to reduce its spread by asking people not to go into caves that could be inhabited by bats. Nobody’s sure how the fungus spreads, but there’s some concern humans may play a part, so the ministry has asked for a moratorium on recreational caving.

Fenton, who has been visiting the same bat cave near Renfrew every year since 1965, doesn’t want to think of what he might see there next year. “I don’t think I can cope with going in there and finding 20,000 dead bats on the floor.”

Natural resources is asking the public to report unusual bat behaviour, such as flying during the day, and any bat deaths by calling 1-866-673-4781. The ministry cautions against touching bats, living or dead, because they may carry rabies.