Pittston Dispatch // PD Columnists // Don Jacobs - Outdoors With Jake

Fatal bat disease spreading into Pennsylvania

Sunday February 08, 2009 | 12:00 AM

Bats are dying and biologists are trying to figure how and why.

Some people can’t understand what all the fuss is about. They look at these flying mammals as a nuisance. Some fear them for their cinema reputation of sucking blood from the necks of unsuspecting star gazing humans. I remember watching as kids from the neighborhood would run so they wouldn’t fly into and get caught up in their hair. Well, the real truth is that bats are a very important player in a well rounded environment and they are not to be feared.

Pennsylvania is home to nine species of bats. Bats eat a wide variety of flying insects, including nocturnal moths, bugs, beetles, flies and mosquitoes. Insects are regularly caught with the wing or tail membrane, and transferred to the mouth. The bat emerges from its day roost at dusk, and usually seeks a body of water, where it skims the surface for a drink, and then hunts insects. Researchers in the past have been able to examine a bat within an hour of taking flight and they often have full stomachs weighing one-fifth of their body weight. The little brown bat for example makes several feeding flights each night, and are capable of catching 1,200 insects per hour. A nursing female may eat her own weight in insects nightly.

All Pennsylvania bats belong to the family of evening bats or common bats. The ecosystem they live in is a fragile one at best. Pesticides in the 1950s and 60s nearly wiped them out, but with a major effort by conservationists across the country the populations of several bats were on the increase. That could change very rapidly. Females produce just one pup a year. If enough females are taken out of a population it could be disastrous for the population in general. This is already true in several states. The plunging number of bats, apparently as many as 90 percent loss in some hibernacula (a place where bats hibernate), translates into a crisis in bat populations in four states with no end in sight and potentially far-reaching effects. It has been called an ecological disaster in the making. This summer we may notice an absence of bats from our night sky, and an increase in insects and therefore insect born diseases.

The culprit in the deaths is the White-Nose Syndrome (WNS). Several hundred little brown bats in Lackawanna County were found dead last week from White-Nose Syndrome (WNS). Pennsylvania Game Commission biologists had been uncovering signs of what appeared to be an impending WNS outbreak in Pennsylvania since last spring. Over the past two years, the disorder has killed more than 90 percent of some wintering bat colonies in New York and spread through New England. Its confirmation in Pennsylvania and New Jersey came in the past two weeks, but Pennsylvania had a surprisingly unique distinction among the states where WNS has been documented; Pennsylvania bats were not leaving their wintering quarters (caves and mines) and weren’t dying. Unfortunately, that no longer can be said.

Last week, bats were found dead outside of an abandoned mine near Carbondale. This gruesome discovery was reported by a local resident. Later WNS was confirmed by a Game Commission officer. The bats were dead on the ground after apparently flying from the mine and dropping from the sky. Then on Groundhog Day, agency biologist Greg Turner found bats flying from another Lackawanna County mine near Throop. They shouldn’t have been emerging for another six weeks.

“Roughly50 percent of the bats in the mine near Carbondale displayed the characteristic white fungus,” said Kevin Wenner, an agency biologist stationed at the agency’s Northeast Region office in Dallas. “Bats have been and are staging closeto the entrance of the mine; some dying in the mine while otherswere flying around and dying outside on top of the snow.The bases of several trees near the mine entrance had piles of dead bats around them. Hundreds were visible on top of the most recent snow, so I suspect there are thousands of dead bats.”

The dead bats all had a fungus around their muzzles and onwing membranes which is a clear indication of WNS. Currently, researchers still are unsure exactly how bats contract WNS or where it began.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission is asking for help from the public. If anyone encounters dead or dying bats along their travels, they are being asked to contact the local office of the Commission at 570-675-1143. The entire news release with much more information on this bat killing disease can be found on the Pennsylvania Game Commission website at www.pgc.state.pa.us. They do however suggest a few precautions. Don’t go in caves or mines or underground. Do not handle bats either dead or alive and keep children and pets away from grounded bats. Even though there are currently no known human health implications associated with WNS, the Game Commission would prefer that people not handle any bats.

I must admit the thought of a summer without bats never concerned me in the past. I didn’t think about the amount of bugs we would have if these flying mammals weren’t speed racing across the night sky. Maybe we should all rethink how we feel about bats. Biologists are concerned enough to put up the environmental red flag about White-Nose Syndrome and that’s good enough for me.

Outdoor Life

Be sure to joins us tonight at 6:30 for WNEP TV’s Pennsylvania Outdoor Life. We’ll take you on a special duck hunt. Our weapon of choice is a fast flying falcon. That’s right; we are hunting with a Grand Falconer and his bird of prey. We will also announce the grand prizes for this year’s Pennsylvania Outdoor Life Expo. Have a great day!