Northeast bat population is in its own hell
— -- The deaths started in a few caves, with hibernating bats dying in place and falling in charnel heaps to the floor. Others, emaciated and starving, fled their roosts to freeze in the chill of winter.
Deepening the mystery: The dead and dying bats had a white fungus on their faces, giving the name "white-nose syndrome" to a plague killing thousands of bats in five Northeastern states.
"Our guys went in and reported thousands of dead bats," says Alan Hicks of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. "Immediately it was clear this was very bad."
Perhaps 11,000 bats eventually died in four nearby caves in 2007; tens of thousands died this past winter in five states, and the deaths continue.
The true death toll could be even higher, says biologist Susi von Oettingen of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service office in Concord N.H., because more bats may have died in uncharted cave roosts.
The die-off triggered a nationwide call last year to find an answer to what was killing the bats. But so far the syndrome remains a riddle. The only clue to its origin Hicks and his colleagues possess is a photo taken by a curious cave explorer of a single afflicted bat inside a cave west of Albany in 2006.
Conservation officials have asked cave explorers to report signs of afflicted bats, but have also asked them not to travel from affected caves to cleared ones, to prevent the transmission of disease.
Not species-specific
All six species of cave-hibernating bats in the Northeast — Eastern pipistrelle, little brown, northern long-eared, small-footed, Indiana and big brown bats — have been killed by the syndrome. All are nocturnal insect-eating mammals that hibernate during winter months in caves and mines, burning body fat slowly to stay just barely warmer than cave temperatures and waking only occasionally.
Yet, says Scott Darling of the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife, "during the daytime in March and April, residents would see them flopping around on the ground."
Related Stories
ABC News Live