A disease that has wiped out millions of bats in New England has spread to a huge cave in north Alabama that is home to the largest known colony of endangered gray bats. Federal officials confirmed the fungus that causes White-Nose Syndrome was found in another species, tri-color bats, at Alabama’s vast Fern Cave National Wildlife Refuge, east of Huntsville.
Via USFWS flickr / Photo by Darwin Brock
As recently as a few years ago, gray bats looked like an endangered-species success story, rebounding from near extinction some four decades ago to an estimated population of several million. Gray bats hibernate in massive colonies of hundreds of thousands, and the Fern Cave site is believed to house over a million.
Gray bats’ fortunes shifted starting around six years ago, with the mysterious emergence of white-nose syndrome, an invasive fungus that thrives in caves. The white fuzz grows onto the bodies of hibernating bats, particularly their faces, and seems to wake them up in the dead of winter. It was first found in upstate New York, and has since spread from cave to cave, likely with help from unwitting bats and spelunkers.
Caves infected with the fungus are often the site of mass die-offs littered with the bodies of countless bats just a few winters after the disease arrives. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Ann Froschauer says whether that pattern holds true among gray bats hasn’t been documented before, but such a die-off at Fern Cave would strike a savage blow.
“Over the next few years, if white-nose syndrome starts to behave the same way in gray bat populations as it has in other species, then we could be looking at a 70 to 90-plus percent loss of those bats that are hibernating in Fern Cave. So we could be looking at losing almost a quarter of the population of gray bats in a very short time period.”
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