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>.