As Halloween approaches, bats and other creatures associated with the spooky holiday take center stage. But, in reality, what’s happening to our bats is far scarier than any frightful Halloween scene.
Untold numbers of bats continue to succumb to white nose syndrome. Since 2006, when it was first discovered in a New York cave, the fungal disease has killed some 6 million of the winged mammals, which consume tons of insects and provide other huge ecological benefits.
The malady is named for the fuzzy white fungus that grows on the wings and muzzles of infected bats as they hibernate in caves during the winter. The fungus depletes the animals’ fat stores and they essentially starve before their normal awakening in the spring.
The disease was first found in North Georgia in early 2013, among bats hibernating in caves and abandoned mine shafts. A survey of those places last winter found that the disease already is taking an alarming toll on the bats.
At Georgia’s largest bat hibernaculum, the Black Diamond Tunnel in Rabun County, biologists counted only 3,472 tri-colored bats (formerly known as Eastern pipistrelles). Usually, more than 5,500 of the bats hibernate there.
Even grimmer were the results from Sitton’s Cave in Cloudland Canyon State Park in northwest Georgia. Biologists found only 250 bats there — an 85 percent decline from two years years ago, when some 1,700 bats hibernated there.
Biologists gearing up for this winter’s survey fear an even gloomier picture. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed adding one of Georgia’s 16 bat species, the northern long eared bat, to the federal Endangered Species List because its numbers have been decimated by WNS.
Katrina Morris, who leads bat monitoring for Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources, sums up the dire situation: “It’s likely that, in my lifetime, I will never again see sites with thousands of hibernating bats. Will there even be places where there are hundreds? We don’t know.”
In the sky: The moon will be first-quarter Thursday, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. Mars is low in the southwest at sunset and sets a few hours later; it will appear near the moon Monday night. Jupiter rises out of the east a few hours after midnight. Saturn is very low in the southwest at dusk and will appear near the moon Saturday night. Venus and Mercury are not easily seen right now.
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