Funds sought to probe bat die-off
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In this January file photo, Scott Crocoll holds a dead Indiana bat in an abandoned mine in Rosendale, N.Y. The U.S. Forest Service is preparing to close thousands of caves and former mines across the eastern United States in an effort to control a bat-killing fungus. AP PHOTO |
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By Peter Hirschfeld VERMONT PRESS BUREAU - Published: May 6, 2009
Vermont's congressional delegation is seeking increased federal resources to investigate what is killing bats, whose widespread die-off could bring ecological disaster.
So-called white-nose syndrome, first detected in New York in 2006, has since infiltrated nearly all of the approximately 30 hibernation caves monitored by the state of Vermont. Scott Darling, a wildlife biologist for the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, said few bats will be unaffected by the mysterious syndrome that kills 95 percent of affected animals.
"In my 27 years in the field I have never seen any suite of species get devastated so swiftly and dramatically as this," Darling said. "I would dare say the Green Mountains of Vermont have never seen a suite of species been taken off the landscape so quickly."
Officials have singled out a fungus as the "leading candidate" as the source of the die-off.
"We're still uncertain whether this is cause of mortality or a symptom, but clearly a lot of our attention is focused on that fungus," Darling said.
Darling, who traveled to Washington, D.C., recently to lobby for increased fiscal resources, said the issue demands more scrutiny.
"We need the funds in order to orchestrate or implement a very collaborative and deliberative attack on finding out what is killing the bats, how we can contain it and then how we can restore our hibernacula and our bat populations," Darling said.
Sen. Bernard Sanders, who co-signed a letter to the Secretary of the Interior seeking emergency funds, said the event could have wide-ranging effects on the eight Northeast states affected by the syndrome so far.
"The bottom line is we're looking at an epidemic," Sanders said. "And we're going to have a very serious problem if we don't stop this significant disruption in the balance of nature."
Experts say they're unsure exactly what sort of ecological repercussions the die-off will precipitate, but the disappearance of bats will no doubt upset a natural balance. A single bat consumes 2,000 to 3,000 insects in a single day.
"One of the problems is you don't know what the long-term repercussions are. We don't know what it means if millions of insects are not consumed by bats," Sanders said. "What we do know is this is a significant issue that touches on issues of human health, agriculture and species preservation."
Members of Congress have asked Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to release new funding immediately to study the issue. Sanders said he will additionally seek special appropriations in the new capital budget, and he will defer to Salazar to decide exactly how much money is appropriate.
"We'll need enough money to bring in the kind of resources needed to do a full investigation of what's happening," he said.
Darling said the phenomenon may signal a new era of invasive organisms, which could exact a catastrophic toll on native species.
"What I fear is a terrible example of the significance of invasive microbes, fungi, that move around the globe and that impact populations that have never, ever been exposed to such microbes," Darling said. "It may be the type of threat our wildlife have in the future and I dare say we're not really adequately prepared to deal with these time and time again."
Darling said no one knows yet what the die-off will mean for Vermont or other affected regions.
"I wish we had good data to quantify what the implications are," Darling said. "Common sense alone dictates we are really living in an ecological experiment here, and we probably will get a much better handle on the role of bats in insect control based on what happens in the next five to 10 years."
Whatever the reasons behind white-nose syndrome, Vermont's bat population will not rebound quickly. The flying mammals have a life span of 25 to 30 years and produce only a single pup a year.
"Unfortunately for bats, when they have been dealt a blow as significant as this they have an extremely low reproduction rate," Darling said. "This kind of devastating event would take generations to respond to and to rebound from."
Darling said he's optimistic that the federal attention will result in a plan to remediate the damage, though difficult budget situations generally, he said, make it a difficult time to squeeze money from the government.
"Unfortunately the bats could not have come up with worse timing to be in need of financial resources," Darling said. "But I'm optimistic the significance of this issue will reach the right people, who hopefully will make the right decisions.
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