WHITE-NOSE SYNDROME SURFACES IN PENNSYLVANIA
SHINDLE, Mifflin County - Aware since 2008 that White-Nose Syndrome appeared to be making its way to the Keystone State, the Pennsylvania Game Commission now has evidence that the deadly bat disorder is likely present in a mine near this small community in the state's heartland. Where else this may be occurring and the consequence to bats -a fragile guild of wildlife species - remains an unfolding story.
In late December, DeeAnn Reeder, a biologist with Bucknell University, and Greg Turner, a biologist with the Game Commission's Wildlife Diversity Section, found bats in an old Mifflin County iron mine that exhibited some of the signs of White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), during field investigations into bat hibernation patterns that included weekly monitoring for the disorder's presence in several Pennsylvania hibernacula. During this work, which had been ongoing for weeks, dozens of bats suddenly had a fungus appear around their muzzles and on the wing membranes, while many more displayed other symptoms associated with this disorder. Several bats were submitted to the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, which now is reporting that the bats have preliminarily tested positive for the cold-loving fungi found on many bats with WNS.
"Our agency, with assistance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other management partners, will work diligently and methodically to measure the extent of the problem in Pennsylvania and monitor the disorder's progression," said Carl G. Roe, Game Commission executive director. "This find is a direct result of the Game Commission's ongoing initiative to proactively monitor for WNS.
"To date, no dead bats have been found in Pennsylvania. That's a plus, but it comes with no promise of what will or won't follow. In New York and New England, the disorder seems to arouse bats from hibernation prematurely. Once they depart from caves and mines, they quickly sap their energy reserves and die on the landscape. Mortality in some colonies has exceeded 90 percent, ensuring that any local recovery will be quite lengthy given the low reproductive rate of bats. Little brown and the federally-endangered Indiana bats produce only one young per year."
For more information, please visit the Pennsylvania Game Commission - State Wildlife Management Agency website:
http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?a=11&Q=175717
