It’s getting closer and closer and it looks like white-nose syndrome, the deadly disease decimating bats across North America, could be in Vancouver within months.
“We are feeling a real sense of urgency because that fungus is within a couple hundred kilometres of Vancouver,” said Cori Lausen, biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, in an interview with CBC. “It’s very likely that that disease will show up there this spring.
”Since its arrival on our continent in 2006, white-nose-syndrome has spread to five Canadian provinces — New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Ontario and Quebec — and 31 U.S. states. It is present in the caves where bats hibernate and it kills them by forcing them to wake up and use energy grooming the powdery white fungus off their bodies.
What makes bats particularly vulnerable is their low reserves of stored fat during hibernation. They can’t afford to expend that extra energy when they are not eating so most will starve to death. Those that manage to make it through the winter may die anyway; the fungus eats holes in their wings.
The current method of treatment is to find where the bats are hibernating, a challenge in itself, and then to spray them with a fungicide, either chemically or naturally derived.
As the disease travels across Canada, much more rapidly than was originally forecasted, Canadian scientists have come up with a remedy that they hope will save the bats.
Cori Lausen, and her colleagues have developed a powder that contains probiotics — bacteria found naturally on bat wings that fights the fungus. That powder will be spread on entrances to bat roosts in hopes it spreads onto their bodies.
Just as “good” bugs are already present in the intestines of humans, those “good” bacteria are already on the bats’ wings. The goal is simply to increase their density. Having been “dusted” with this probiotic all summer, an action Lausen compares to humans eating yogurt, the bats will arrive at their hibernation site with wing microbes that are going to keep the white nose fungus from growing.
The hope is to have the powder in Vancouver bat roosts by the summer.
The more bats that can be saved the more insects they will eat and the less pesticide will be required to control the insect population.
~Shirley Byers