White Nose Syndrome

Holy Smokes, Batman! Bats have new nemesis, a disease called White Nose Syndrome (WNS), that is moving south after first being found in Gotham City, AKA New York, in 2006. The threat is serious and has a lot of bat fans worried as it could cause a calamitous change to the food chain if it decimates the millions of bats we have here (in Georgia). Bats play an important role in the success of large scale agriculture, backyard gardens, and even outdoor dinner parties, by often eating as much as half of their body weight in insects each night. WSN is basically a fungal infection in the soil that leaves the bats with a white residue on their noses and is feared to be able to cause possible the extinction of bats, so I’ll add Holy Extinction, Batman! here for emphasis. It has killed more than 5 million bats so far and has already spread through 22 states and five Canadian provinces and though it is not yet widespread in Georgia, it has been found in north Georgia’s Cloudland Canyon. The disease does its greatest damage in the winter months by disturbing the bats’ hibernation cycle and sending them out to feed when since there aren't insects (their main food source) available, the bats starve to death. Hopefully if the winter weather is mild enough (certainly the case in south GA this year-I remember complaining about gnats in February) there will be enough insects out and about to sustain the bats awakened early. In the meantime, I hope biologists soon get a handle on this disease and figure out a way to neutralize its damaging affects before it is too late the rest of the bats.