News stories tagged with "bats"

(04/19/11) State biologists say Little brown bats are no longer the most common bat in New York.

Their numbers have been wiped out so dramatically by the fungal disease known as "white nose syndrome" that they are now outnumbered by Big brown bats.

In all roughly half a million bats have died in New York state alone since 2007.

White nose has also spread from Upstate New York to a dozen other states, as well as Ontario and Quebec.

Brian Mann checked in with Carl Herzog. He's a wildlife biologist with the Department of Environmental Conservation, who led research trips to bat caves this winter.

Herzog says two species - Indiana bats and Northern bats - have been nearly wiped out. But he also said researchers found some signs for hope. more

(02/15/11) The rapid spread of the bat-killing disease known as White Nose Syndrome continues to baffle and alarm scientists. The fungus was first identified in upstate New York and has now appeared in states as far away as Oklahoma and North Carolina. Brian Mann has our update. more

(12/29/10) The deadly bat disease known as 'white nose syndrome' was first identified in northern New York over three years ago. It's still spreading rapidly, with outbreaks confirmed this year in Ontario and as far away as Tennessee.

Here in the North Country, biologists now say the disease has wiped out 95% of the largest bat colonies.

Brian Mann was with a team of biologists when they returned early last spring to the cave near Albany where the first bats infected with white nose were discovered. He sent this audio postcard.

(06/25/10) An environmental group based in Vermont says it plans to sue the federal government over its handling of white nose syndrome. That's the deadly disease that's been killing bats across the eastern US.

The Center for Biological Diversity hopes to pressure the Interior Department into adding two species of bats to the endangered species list.

As Brian Mann reports, that could mean changes to timber harvesting and other human activities in the forests where the bats spend their summers. more

(03/29/10) The deadly bat disease known as white-nose syndrome was first identified in upstate New York three years ago. It continues to spread fast, with outbreaks now confirmed as far away as Ontario and Maryland. Researchers still don't know how to stop the fungus from reaching new caves. Here in the North Country, biologists now say the disease has already wiped out 95% of the largest bat colonies. Brian Mann traveled recently with a team of biologists returning to the cave near Albany where the first bats infected with white nose were discovered. He sent this audio postcard.

(12/17/09) Researchers say a disease called 'white nose syndrome' has killed more than 90 percent of the bats in the North Country and in caves across the Northeast. The report issued yesterday by New York's Conservation Department found that some of the most important hibernation sites have been completely wiped out. North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reports.

(12/09/09) Last week, the US Fish & Wildlife Service issued preliminary guidelines urging roughly two-dozen states to prepare for the arrival of "white nose syndrome." That's the deadly fungal disease that has wiped out bat colonies across northern New York and Vermont. White nose was first discovered in a cave near Albany. Some of the hardest hit sites are in the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains, where researchers estimate that hundreds of thousands of animals have died. Brian Mann spoke yesterday with Jeremy Coleman, with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Coleman is the national coordinator for the hundreds of scientists working to develop a response to white nose syndrome.

(09/25/09) Every state in the northeast has set a target for increasing the amount of renewable energy it produces. Wind power is a big part of this push. Those towers and turbine blades can pose dangers to birds and bats. With more interest nationally in developing wind power, scientists are searching for more answers about the impacts, and how to minimize them.

The North Country is already home to the biggest wind farm in the east. Maple Ridge wind farm's 195 turbines tower over the Tug Hill Plateau in Lewis County. That's where David Chanatry visited to file this report as part of a collaboration of northeast stations. (Northeast environmental hub coverage is part of NPR's Local News Initiative.) more

(08/18/09) State Conservation biologist Al Hicks says the old Graphite Mine in the town of Hague near Lake George has seen its population of Little Brown Bats nearly wiped out. Hicks spoke over the weekend at a gathering of the Adirondack Nature Conservancy in Newcomb. He said the hibernaculum, which sits in a Nature Conservancy Preserve, has been infected by a deadly bat disease called "white nose syndrome."

"The Graphite Mine was the largest Little Brown colony counted in the world, with about 200,000 animals," Hicks said. "Our guess walking through was that there was about 3,000 animals left."

Hicks first raised the alarm about white nose syndrome in 2007. He said the latest research indicates that the disease continues to spread in all directions. "We have not seen any clear evidence yet of any kind of resistance," he added. "The animals that are surviving from one year to the next appear to be animals that simply got lucky and didn't get infected." White nose is now killing bats in at least nine states. Hicks predicted that under the worst case scenario "an entire order of mammals" would be wiped out from the United States.

As part of our Story 2.0 series, we revisit Hicks' trip to Aeolus Cave in Vermont last winter.

(08/04/09) This summer, researchers are fanning out across the Northeast trying to get a clearer picture of what is happening to the region's bats. Scientists say many bat colonies have been wiped out by a fungal disease, called white-nose syndrome, first detected in 2006. One of the big questions still unanswered is how white-nose syndrome is transmitted. Brian Mann joined a team of biologists studying bats in an old church in Willsboro in the Champlain Valley.