What can you do to help?

You personally, can aid in the fight against White nose Syndrome. There are various things you can do to not only to support infected bat communities but also to prevent other communities from getting infected. For one you should never handle bats, dead or alive. Despite the fact that humans and other animals are incapable of catching WNS they can still be primary spreaders. While the major cause of WNS spread is bat to bat contact contamination of healthy bat populations through third party sources such as humans unknowingly transferring it on clothes or gear also have very dire consequences. If you do come in contact with a bat that appears to have WNS you should immediately contact your state wildlife agency and report the occurrence. This will help specialists in isolating and documenting the spread of the disease. You should also be sure to clean and disinfect whatever gear or clothes you were wearing at the time in order to reduce chances of unintentionally spreading it. To further emphasize the importance of not directly interacting with sickly looking bats I would like to point out that it may not even be affected with WNS, it could quite possibly have rabies, which unlike WNS can be very fatal to humans. Overall you should do your best to avoid caves with large populations of hibernating bats as to ensure the disease is not spread. While this may sound drastic it is important to remember that WNS is very quickly decimating entire bat populations in the U.S. and therefore we need to take all the precautions possible in order to avoid infecting healthy bat populations avoid extinction! As for aiding with infected bat populations the best and most effective thing you personally can do is to donate to agencies devoted to researching and stopping the spread of WNS. https://www.facebook.com/BatCon is a link to a nonprofit international bat conservation group whom you can make donations to!

Works Cited:

Blehert, Davis S. "Bat White-Nose Syndrome: An Emerging Fungal Pathogen?" Whitenosesyndrome.org. Science Xpress, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2012. <http://whitenosesyndrome.org/sites/default/files/resource/blehert_et_al_2008_wns_fungus_total.pdf>.

Elliott, Tony. "White-Nose Syndrome in Missouri." Missouri's Fish, Forests and Wildlife. Missouri Department of Conservation, Apr. 2012. Web. 28 Nov. 2012. <http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/outdoor-recreation/caving/white-nose-syndrome-missouri>.

Impacts of White-Nose Syndrome

White-nose syndrome has caused a great deal of impact across North America, not only to the bats themselves but also their environments. The primary and most substantial impact being that it has decimated an estimated 6.7 million North American bats, cases have documented the mortality rate of bat populations inflicted with WNS to be as high as 95%! It does not stop there however. Bats are very productive members of their environment. They play a very large role in maintaining economical balance amongst their community. Bats serve as the primary predators for nocturnal-flying insects, meaning they are the primary consumer of insects like mosquitos, moths, beetles, and various other pests. Bats eat thousands of insects nightly, consuming roughly half their weight in insects each time. By keeping these insect populations in check bats play a large role in forestry, agriculture, as well as human health. The decrease in bat population has led to a vast increase in nocturnal-flying insect population leaving their ecosystems in a state on unbalance. With no consumer to regulate the amount of nocturnal-flying insects their numbers flourish which takes a grave toll on the agricultural industry. These insects are left to freely gorge themselves on agricultural crops leaving less food for other members of the ecosystem as well as cutting a large amount of profit for agricultural workers. According to www.batconservation.org bats save the agricultural industry “at least” $23 billion dollar annually because the farmers do not have to purchase as many pesticides. The decrease in bat population causing the agricultural industry to purchase more pesticides may result in the increase of food costs in order to make up for expenses and lost profit. In tropical environments bats also serve as aids in pollinating plants and dispersing seeds. Bats eat fruit and pick up pollen from plants which they transfer to other plants resulting in pollination. Similarly by eating fruit, seeds become dispersed throughout the environment whether they be deposited to new location through feces or unknowingly attached to the bats fur then randomly discarded. That being said the decline of bats has taken a grave toll on various environments, causing a plethora of issues and inconveniences. Not to mention, they are also really cute, and nobody likes when cute things die… 

 Citations:

 Dzal, Yvonne. "Going, Going, Gone: The Impact of White-nose Syndrome on the Summer Activity of the Little Brown Bat (Myotis Lucifugus)." Going, Going, Gone: The Impact of White-nose Syndrome on the Summer Activity of the Little Brown Bat (Myotis Lucifugus). The Royal Society, 02 Nov. 2010. Web. 07 Nov. 2012. <http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/3/392.short>.

 Boyles, Justin G. "Could Localized Warm Areas inside Cold Caves Reduce Mortality of Hibernating Bats Affected by White-nose Syndrome?" Http://www.esajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1890/080187. The Ecological Society of America, 5 Mar. 2009. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.