More deadly than a Batman super-villain, white-nose syndrome is a fungal disease that has wiped out millions of bats in North America (in 29 states and 5 Canadian provinces) since 2007.
“White-nose syndrome is caused by a fungus that’s not native to North America and it grows on bats while they’re hibernating in caves and basically causes them to use up the energy they have stored to get through the winter,” Cory Holliday, Cave and Karst Program Director for the Nature Conservancy in Tennessee explains. “And these bats end up out on the landscape in February and March looking for food and insects to eat, but it’s still winter, and they frequently just die of starvation.”
To fight this epidemic, since 2014 The Nature Conservancy and Bat Conservation International have co-funded research projects designed to test methods for controlling white-nose syndrome. One extremely promising project, which employs bacteria used to keep bananas from ripening too fast, has been shown to stop the white-nose fungus from growing. It led to the release of healed bats!
But because that project still needs more testing and because we don’t know which tools or techniques for fighting WNS will be most effective and cost efficient, it’s imperative that we try many approaches. Controlling this disease may require several different strategies.
In the meantime, while our scientists are racing to find the best treatments, we are making sure that we’re providing those bats that are surviving the best habitat protection we can.