This evening we had an awesome Batfest out at Hidden Oaks Nature Center in Annandale, Virginia. This is part of the most excellent Fairfax County park system, and I was just there to answer questions about bat work and bats in general.
The staff did an amazing job of putting together a wonderful program including talks about bats and bat conservation and actually hiking in the woods at night. Live bats were brought by Leslie Sturges, a bat rehabilitator who works to release injured bats back into the wild.
And while this was a really fun evening, one of the key points was that many bats are dying from White Nose Syndrome (WNS), a fungus (Psuedogymnoascus destructans) that attacks them during hibernation and has in many places created population losses of more than 90 percent for some species.
Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus) have been hit hard, and while they were one of the most common bats in the northeast ten years ago, they are now absent or very rare across the area. There is a site working to save them, run by Ms. Sturges, and they do accept donations. The campaign is called Save Lucy. Lucy being the common name among biologists for the species, Myotis lucifugus.
http://savelucythebat.org/
There is lots of info on this site. But I also recommend reading the Wikipedia site for WNS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nose_syndrome
And to see a map of the spread of the disease the Pennsylvania Game Commission has been a leader with this:
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_416660_112129_9109_615025_43/http;/pubcontent.state.pa.us/publishedcontent/publish/marketingsites/game_commission/content/wildlife/wildlife_diseases/white_nose_syndrome/images/wnsmap.jpg
The staff did an amazing job of putting together a wonderful program including talks about bats and bat conservation and actually hiking in the woods at night. Live bats were brought by Leslie Sturges, a bat rehabilitator who works to release injured bats back into the wild.
And while this was a really fun evening, one of the key points was that many bats are dying from White Nose Syndrome (WNS), a fungus (Psuedogymnoascus destructans) that attacks them during hibernation and has in many places created population losses of more than 90 percent for some species.
Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus) have been hit hard, and while they were one of the most common bats in the northeast ten years ago, they are now absent or very rare across the area. There is a site working to save them, run by Ms. Sturges, and they do accept donations. The campaign is called Save Lucy. Lucy being the common name among biologists for the species, Myotis lucifugus.
http://savelucythebat.org/
There is lots of info on this site. But I also recommend reading the Wikipedia site for WNS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nose_syndrome
And to see a map of the spread of the disease the Pennsylvania Game Commission has been a leader with this:
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_416660_112129_9109_615025_43/http;/pubcontent.state.pa.us/publishedcontent/publish/marketingsites/game_commission/content/wildlife/wildlife_diseases/white_nose_syndrome/images/wnsmap.jpg
This is one of the greatest die-offs of mammals in recorded history, so worth noting, and here is the poster at Batfest about it.
Photos of bats with White Nose Syndrome and information about it. The blue balance in the lower right has fake bats on the left and a bowl of fake bugs on the right to show how many insects a single bat can eat in one night, emphasizing the impact of lost bats related to the size of insect populations
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