‘White Nose’ Syndrome Found
In Elizabeth Mine Bats
By Sandy Vondrasek

White Nose Syndrome, which has decimated bat populations elsewhere, is now threatening Vermont bats, including these little brown bats. (Provided) 1Sandy 1

The bats, alas.

White Nose Syndrome, the mysterious condition linked to the death of tens of thousands of bats since 2006, mostly in New York, has turned up in Strafford.

And since Strafford is home to one of the largest bat hibernation sites in the state—the Elizabeth Mine—residents might find a lot of dead or sick bats on their properties in the next few weeks.

Strafford resident Emily Davis said this week that she has found four bats, one sick and three dead, in the past few days on her property, two or three miles from the mine, "as the bat flies, so to speak."

She’s worried: "With the dying bee colonies, and now dying bat colonies, what will be next?"

The spread of the disease to Vermont has alarmed state wildlife officials. In previous outbreaks, first documented in New York two years ago, up to 95% of the bats at the affected caves died, according to Vermont wildlife biologist Scott Darling.

Elizabeth Mine serves each winter as a "hibernaculum" for an unknown number of bats—"certainly tens of thousands," Darling said.

"We didn’t know until 2001 that Elizabeth Mine was a big bat haven," Darling added.

This is how big: When biologists put a five-by-six-foot "trap" over a big cut in the mine one fall, they captured 300 bats in one hour.

"In the fall, bats are swarming there," Darling said.

Three types of bats hibernate in the cave—the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat, and the small-footed bat, already listed as threatened in the state.

Biologists haven’t done any population counts inside Elizabeth Mine, because there is no safe access to it.

Darling said Tuesday that he started receiving reports of dead or "flopping" bats in Strafford area early last week. At least one of the bats found exhibited the fuzzy white nose—a fungal growth on the muzzle—that gave the syndrome its name. It’s called a syndrome, and not a disease, because researchers have identified a set of symptoms associated with the outbreak, but don’t really know the cause.

Last week’s sightings in Strafford marked the first time that the syndrome has been confirmed on the east side of Vermont. Earlier this year, emaciated and dead bats, many with the white fungal growth on their noses, were found in and outside of several caves in southwestern Vermont. Biologists have since received numerous reports of affected bats from that side of the state, Darling said.

The syndrome has also been documented at winter hibernation sites in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The Strafford discovery likely means that the syndrome is heading to neighboring New Hampshire, as the bats that converge at the Elizabeth Mine each fall fan out in the spring to locations throughout eastern Vermont and western New Hampshire.

Investigating this deadly—and still mysterious—outbreak has been a heartbreaking and frustrating affair for biologists like Darling.

"We have 10 labs—wild animal and animal health labs, and the best ones—that have done an awful lot of work on the disease," he said. "They have looked at viruses, bacteria, and the fungi themselves (that cause the white nose), and all that we can confirm is that the bats are emaciated—they have lost their fat reserves—and there is some pulmonary congestion or pneumonia in many of the bats."

It’s not yet clear whether some infectious disease is killing the bats, or whether they are succumbing to opportunistic maladies, after having been weakened by some other cause.

Darling admitted that he and other biologists don’t even know whether bats were "in good shape to begin with" when they entered hibernation last fall.

Nor is it clear whether the bats at affected sites in Vermont will die at the alarmingly high rates observed in other states.

In New York, Darling noted, bat populations at affected sites have continued to decline since 2006.

As bat populations drop, insect populations will likely rise.

"We will find out more this summer, but we do know that bats are significant predators of insects at night," Darling said. "Our bats here in Vermont primarily eat members of the fly order, such as mosquitoes and mayflies, as well as moths."

The moths include kinds that munch down farm crops or tree leaves in their caterpillar stages.

"You can do some simple math," Darling said. "Some 500,000 bats will eat about two billion bugs a night. If our losses go to that, that’s a lot of bugs that won’t get eaten by bats this year."