White-Nose 97-100% Fatal In Northern Long-Eared Bats; FWS Expects 100% Infection By 2025

[hatrack]

Fifteen years after its was first discovered in a New York cave, white-nose syndrome has decimated the nation’s population of northern long-eared bats, reducing their numbers to almost nothing.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moved to reclassify the mammals from threatened to endangered after a review found that “white-nose syndrome is expected to affect 100 percent” of the animals by 2025. “White-nose syndrome has caused estimated declines of 97 to 100 percent of affected … populations,” the review said.

Endangered species are animals on the path to extinction, while threatened species are likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future, the service said. Species on the endangered list are afforded a suite of federal protections that threatened animals do not get. White-nose syndrome, a fungus known as Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has been compared to HIV/AIDS for the way it burns through the skin and membrane of numerous bat species and kicks their immune systems into a frenzy, so much so that it attacks both healthy and unhealthy cells. The disease attacks bats as they hibernate in mines and caves. Thousands of the animals have been found dead or convulsing where they slept.

EDIT

Fish and Wildlife officials would not estimate the number of northern long-eared bats in the United States, but the state of New York projected that it has about half a million. In 2012, before the Fish and Wildlife Service stopped projecting the number of bats of all species killed by white-nose syndrome, the agency estimated that the disease has left about 6.7 million dead. Since that time, it has spread from the South and the Mid-Atlantic region to Nebraska and the Pacific Northwest.

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/03/22/disease-more-lethal-than-covid-19-has-nearly-wiped-out-northern-long-eared-bats/

[samnsara]

1. the bats in my county in wash state have been identified as infected as well. I have a...

small colony living in my attic and over the years we have watched the population decline. In 2020 i found 3 sick/dead bats in my yard..none had white nose that I could tell. Fish and game and checked out the colony but were unable to peer inside so they will return at sunset this summer to use sonar to identify what species of bats live here.