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White-nose syndrome has decimated bat populations in eight states from New Hampshire to West Virginia and could reach Georgia, where 16 different species of bats have their homes.
As a precaution, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has urged cave explorers to stay away from caves in those states, plus those in adjacent states.
Georgia, alone is home to about 600 caves, most of them located in Georgia’s northwestern tip. About 500 of them are on private property, while 100 are in state parks and other public sites.
“We don’t have white-nose syndrome yet. But we may consider closing them,” biologist Katrina Morris of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said.
She also added that bats are really needed because they are insatiable insect-eaters; on a spring or summer night, a hungry bat can usually eat its weight in bugs.
The white-nose syndrome was only discovered two years ago, when a recreational explorer took a picture inside the Howes Cave west of Albany, New York, which showed the aforementioned fungal growth that affected bats.
By 2007, the syndrome had been recorded in thirty-three states and it has been reported to have already hit six species, including the little brown bat and the Indiana bat, which is endangered species.
Marianne Moore of Boston University, who specializes in bat immunology, informed at the end of 2008 that the white-nose syndrome caused, on average, the death of 80 to 100 percent of the bats in hibernation sites.
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