Category Archives: white nose syndrome

WNS: Gray Bat Trouble, and Canada Gets Organized

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gray bats WNSAn Alabama cave that contains contains the largest documented wintering colony of federally listed endangered gray bats — about a million of them — has been struck by white nose syndrome (WNS), the US Fish and Wildlife Service reported yesterday. The good news is that WNS is not known to cause death in gray bats.

The infected bats found in the cave were tri-colored bats (aka eastern pipestrelles).

“With over a million hibernating gray bats, Fern Cave is undoubtedly the single most significant hibernaculum for the species,” said Paul McKenzie, Endangered Species Coordinator for the Service in the press release. “Although mass mortality of gray bats has not yet been confirmed from any WNS infected caves in which the species hibernates, the documentation of the disease from Fern Cave is extremely alarming and could be catastrophic. The discovery of WNS on a national wildlife refuge only highlights the continued need for coordination and collaboration with partners in addressing this devastating disease.”

Read the entire release, which has lots of details about the cave and how the infection was found, here.

In Canada, Environment Canada has committed to an additional $330,000 over four years for national coordination, surveillance and response to WNS. The US has had a national WNS coordinator (Jeremy Coleman, USFWS) for five years. The Canadian funds will go to the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre.

“Canadian biologists and managers have done an incredible job responding to the threat of this disease with the resources they have,” said Katie Gillies, Imperiled Species Coordinator at Bat Conservation International in a letter to that organization’s members. “But hiring a formal WNS coordinator will certainly streamline those efforts and maximize their impact on this tragic disease. This is a very important step.

 

Read the Environment Canada press release here and here.

Photo: Gray bats, courtesy USFWS

White Nose Syndrome in Georgia

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cumberland gap wns batAccording to a Georgia Department of Natural Resources press release:

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that bats with white-nose syndrome were found recently at two caves in Dade County.

 

A National Park Service biologist and volunteers discovered about 15 tri-colored bats with visible white-nose symptoms in a Lookout Mountain Cave at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in late February. On March 5, a group led by a Georgia DNR biologist also found tri-colored bats with visible symptoms in Sittons Cave at Cloudland Canyon State Park.

This news follows quickly on the announcement just yesterday that white nose syndrome had been found in South Carolina. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources release says, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s WNS map confirms, that Dade County, Georgia is contiguous with counties in Alabama and Tennessee that confirmed WNS last year.

I’ll sometimes say that “it’s white nose season,” but what that means may not be clear if you haven’t been following WNS closely. This is a cold-loving fungus that requires low temperatures to become symptomatic in bats. WNS is typically detected at the end of winter, particularly in southern locations or in places where the infection is in its early stages. Add in time for a laboratory to analyze the bat to confirm WNS, and you are usually looking at a window of March through June for announcements of new WNS sites.

Read the Georgia DNR release here.
Find the USFWS map here. (Look carefully at the northwest corner of Georgia.)
If you want traditional media, there is a short piece in USA Today, here.

Photo: An eastern pipistrelle bat — aka tri-colored bat — found at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park (in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia) shows visible signs of white-nose syndrome. Courtesy of the National Park Service

White Nose Syndrome in South Carolina

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SC WNSA tri-colored bat, found dead in Table Rock State Park in the northwestern corner of South Carolina, has been confirmed to have white nose syndrome (WNS), the Charlotte Observer and S.C. Department of Natural Resources report.

The SC DNR press release says:

The bat was collected on Feb. 21, transported on ice, and submitted to the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study in Athens, Ga. The Wildlife Disease Study confirmed the presence of Geomyces destructans fungus, which causes WNS.

 

It further says:

“We have been expecting WNS in South Carolina,” said Mary Bunch, wildlife biologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources (DNR) based in Clemson. “We have watched the roll call of states and counties and Canadian provinces grow each year since the first bat deaths were noted in New York in 2007.”

South Carolina is the 21st state to report a case of WNS. The roll cal includes five Canadian provinces. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s WNS map shows this newest WNS site as being located in the Appalachian Mountains, not far from many other Southern mountain sites in North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia.

Read the Charlotte Observer article here.
Read the SC DNR press release here.

Illustration: The USFWS March 11, 2013 WNS map, showing a new site in Pickens County, South Carolina confirmed. Map by Carl Butchkoski, PA Game Commission

White Nose Syndrome in Illinois

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Illinois WNS mapWhite nose syndrome (WNS) in bats was detected in four Illinois counties in February, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s WNS map shows that the new sites in southern Illinois are near other sites in other states, while the site in the northern part of the state stands alone (although it is somewhat near last year’s unconfirmed Iowa site).

The article notes that Illinois is the 20th state to be struck by WNS.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources press release says that the bats found with WNS were little brown bats and northern long-eared bats.

Read the Chicago Sun-Times article here.
Read the Illinois DNR press release here.
See the updated WNS map from the US Fish and Wildlife Service here.

In addition: the suspected case of WNS on Prince Edward Island in Canada, which we reported on last month, has been confirmed to be WNS.

Read the article on the CBC website, here.

(‘Tis the season for WNS reports. It generally runs from March through June, so stay tuned.)

Map: Cal Butchkoski, PA Game Commission, used courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service

White Nose in New Locations

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cumberland gap wns batA scientist says that he’s “99 percent sure” that a bat found on Prince Edward Island, in Canada, was killed by white nose syndrome, reports CBC News. The article notes that bats typically don’t over-winter on Prince Edward Island and that this one may have blown in from New Brunswick.

Read the CBC News article here.

Bats in yet another national park, Cumblerland Gap National Historical Park, have been stricken by white nose syndrome, the National Park Service reports. For those of you keeping score, that brings the number to 10 parks where white nose syndrome has struck.

Three bats tested positive for the disease, the press release says, and two had visible signs. At least one of the bats was an eastern pipistrelle. The park contains more than 30 caves.

The park press release has the most information. Read it here. (PDF)
General information about WNS in national parks is in this press release.
An article in the Marietta Daily Journal summarizes the press release. Read it here.

Photo: An eastern pipistrelle bat found at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park shows visible signs of white-nose syndrome. Courtesy of the National Park Service.

Western-most White Nose Syndrome?

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WNS in MOI almost skipped the news that another white nose syndrome (WNS) site has been confirmed in Missouri, because WNS was confirmed in the state last year (covered here), and the new site didn’t seem to represent a significant change.

Leave it to ProMED, however, to point out that the new site, in Onondaga Cave at Onondaga Cave State Park in Crawford County, is the western-most confirmed site of white nose syndrome in bats. So it is significant after all.

ProMED got the news from OzarksFirst.com, here.
I read the press release from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and you can too.

However, the fungus that causes white nose syndrome has been found farther west, in Oklahoma, although it did not cause white nose syndrome in bats there. That might be because of the warmer, shorter winters in Oklahoma or it might be because it was associated with a different species of bat. You can read the Bat Conservation International press release for more info on the situation in Oklahoma. (It’s a PDF.)

Photo: Little brown bat with visible fungus collected at Onondaga Cave. Photo credit: MDC/Shelly Colatskie

WNS Hits Mammoth Cave NP

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MACA_long_cave_MYSE_4Jan2013_forReleaseMammoth Cave in Kentucky used to be one of the largest bat hibernaculums in the world. Indiana bats were particularly fond of the place, and the decline of the cave as a hibernaculum served as a warning to how vulnerable that species is.

On Wednesday, the National Park Service announced that white nose syndrome (WNS) had been confirmed in a northern long-eared bat in Long Cave, a cave in Mammoth Cave National Park that had been closed to visitors for more than 80 years.

“It grieves me to make this announcement,” said Mammoth Cave National Park Superintendent Sarah Craighead in a press release.

Mammoth Cave National Park is home to two federally endangered species of bats and one considered a species of special concern by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It is also home to two state endangered bat species, two state threatened bat species and one species of special concern to the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission, according to the National Park Service.

WNS was first discovered in Kentucky in April 2011. The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s white nose syndrome map shows another detection in Kentucky this season, in Bell County, making these the first reports of WNS this season.

Read the Mammoth Cave National Park press release here.
Read an article in the Louisville Courier-Journal here.
See the USFWS white nose syndrome map here.

Photo: A northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) from Long Cave in Mammoth Cave National Park showing evidence of white-nose syndrome. By Steven Thomas, used courtesy of the National Park Service

Model Predicts WNS Peak

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little brown bat with white nose syndrome on cave wallA study published recently in Nature Communications models the spread of white nose syndrome in bats, says a press release from the University of Georgia. The model that fits the history of the disease’s dispersal across the United States, predicts a peak in infections in 2015-2016. It also predicts that caves most areas of the United States will have the WNS fungus within 100 years. The model does not include data from Canada.

The model shows that cold winters and the existence of caves are the key factors in where the disease is found.

Read the University of Georgia press release here.
Read the Nature Communications abstract, here. (A subscription or fee is required to access the full article.)

Photo: Little brown bat with white nose syndrome, courtesy of Missouri Dept. of Conservation.

Bat Fungus Sticks Around

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WhiteNoseBat_scientist08Wisconsin researchers have confirmed that Geomyces destructans, the fungus that causes white nose syndrome (WNS) in bats, persists in caves long after all the bats in the cave have died off.

A paper published ahead of print in Applied and Environmental Microbiology also says that because the fungus has been found in all the caves that have had WNS outbreaks, but is not found in caves beyond the region where WNS has been found, the findings support the hypothesis that the fungus is an exotic species in North America.

The paper is particularly bad news in light of recent reports of bats repopulating caves where WNS had struck years ago.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison press release offers one tiny bit of good news. Bats that hibernate in near-freezing conditions seem to fare better than bats hibernating in conditions a few degrees warmer. David Blehert, a microbiologist at the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center in Madison and a lead researcher on the paper, says that the fungus grows much slower at those low temperatures.

Read the abstract in Applied and Environmental Microbiology. (The full article requires a subscription or fee.)Read the University of Wisconsin press release here.

Photo: A biologist takes samples from a cave in an early attempt to determine the cause of the deadly white-nose syndrome in hibernating bats. Courtesy of  USGS National Wildlife Health Center

Penn. Abandons Bat Petition

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little brown bat with white nose syndrome on cave wallThe article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette seemed a little harsh, claiming that the Pennsylvania Game Commission caved to industry pressure when it abandoned its petition to list bat species that had been affected by white nose syndrome. A tiny bit of digging turned up the PGC press release, which pretty much admits to just that:

“Through this process, we heard from various wildlife organizations and representatives from the timber, oil, coal and gas industries, as well as legislators.  At the present time, it is clear that more discussion, research and coordination need to be done on WNS and the other outside factors that are impacting our bat populations, as well as how we can craft solutions that protect bats without threatening the industries that employ thousands of Pennsylvanians.”

Read the PGC press release here.
Read the article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette here.
Read a press release from the Center for BioDiversity here.

Photo: little brown bat with white nose syndrome, courtesy of Missouri Dept. of Conservation