Northeast Region, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

White-Nose Syndrome:
Something is killing our bats

Photo: Marvin Moriarty/USFWS

Little brown bat at Greeley Mine, Vermont, with white-nose syndrome, March 26, 2009.

Current news

The Department of the Interior appropriations bill contains $1.9 million for research, monitoring and related activities to respond to the massive mortality in bats from white-nose syndrome. Congress passed the bill Oct. 30, and President Obama signed it the same day.

Lincoln Caverns in Huntingdon, Pa., hosted "Hauntingdon Night" in October. A portion of each ticket purchase went to Bat Conservation International's White-Nose Syndrome Research Rapid Response Fund. Since June, Lincoln Caverns has encouraged visitors to contribute to WNS research. They have collected more than $2,000. Individual visitors contributed, as did a Methodist Church youth group. Lincoln Caverns staff chose to donate money collected in a wishing well; a school coloring contest featured a bat illustration and asked students to tape dimes to their artwork as contributions; and guests at a State College girl's 10th birthday party contributed to the WNS research in lieu of presents.

The Service announced six research grants Oct. 26. The projects funded will search for the cause and a way to control white-nose syndrome. The grants came from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Preventing Extinction fund and totaled $800,000.

News Release

In mid-October, New York DEC biologists helped set up video cameras in a mine where WNS has severely impacted hibernating bats. The U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service planned and funded this project, which is also monitoring a cave likely to become affected by WNS this winter. The video surveillance will monitor for aberrant behaviors of hibernating bats, such as excessive grooming, unusually long periods of activity, or winter flight. USGS researchers are assessing whether such behaviors could be the link between skin infection by the fungus Geomyces destructans and death by starvation after premature depletion of winter fat reserves. Preliminary results are expected by late spring 2010.

State fish and wildlife agencies have until Jan. 8 to apply for state wildlife grants. Last year, Northeast Region states combined forces and received $940,870 for white-nose syndrome work.

The Service's Northeast Regional Director Marvin Moriarty presented the framework for a national plan to manage the national response to white-nose syndrome during a meeting of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Sept. 13 to 16 in Austin, Texas. The draft framework for A Plan for Assisting States, Federal Agencies, and Tribes in Managing White-Nose Syndrome in Bats was prepared in coordination with the U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and state agencies. It provides an overview of the expected plan content.

The population of endangered Indiana bats in the Service's Northeast Region dropped 30 percent from 2007 to 2009, according to preliminary estimates from the 2009 count of Indiana bats. The Northeast Region has 12 to 13 percent of the Indiana bat population. We will release final results later this year.

On the evening of Sept. 10, biologists from the FWS and from the State of Vermont met at Elizabeth Mine in Strafford, Vt., for an annual bat survey. In years past the survey has yielded a sample of 900 bats. Last year this number dropped to 300, and this year biologists captured only one bat. Although the survey measures a fraction of the bat population in the mine, it seems to indicate a significant drop in bat numbers.

See the video.

Epilogue: Two nights later, Vermont's Scott Darling returned to the site. It was a perfect night for bats -- warmer than on the 10th and not too bright. Again, he found just one bat.

What is white-nose syndrome?

In February 2006 some 40 miles west of Albany, N.Y., a caver photographed hibernating bats with an unusual white substance on their muzzles. He noticed several dead bats. The following winter, bats behaving erratically, bats with white noses, and a few hundred dead bats in several caves came to the attention of New York Department of Environmental Conservation biologists, who documented white-nose syndrome in January 2007. Hundreds of thousands of hibernating bats have died since. Biologists with state and federal agencies and organizations across the country are still trying to find the answer to this deadly mystery.

We have found sick, dying and dead bats in unprecedented numbers in and around caves and mines from Vermont to Virginia. In some hibernacula, 90 to 100 percent of the bats are dying.

While they are in the hibernacula, affected bats often have white fungus on their muzzles and other parts of their bodies. They may have low body fat. These bats often move to cold parts of the hibernacula, fly during the day and during cold winter weather when the insects they feed upon are not available, and exhibit other uncharacteristic behavior.

Despite the continuing search to find the source of this condition by numerous laboratories and state and federal biologists, the cause of the bat deaths remains unknown. Recent identification of a cold-loving fungus could be a step toward an answer.