Tennessee caves closed-White nose syndrome (1 Viewer)

Tennessee caves closed-White Nose Syndrome

http://news.tennesseeanytime.org/node/2197
Tennessee has closed all public caves mines and grottos for a year due to WNS (google it, please). At first, my reaction was somewhat indignant, but this is the right thing to do. Kudos to the state for having the forethought...wish others would.

Not just Tennessee

Looks like most of the Eastern US caves north of Tennessee and East of Ohio are being closed for the year (at least the state-run ones). US Fish and Wildlife asking everyone to stay out of caves for the year.
http://www.fws.gov/northeast/wnscavers.html

Bout' time y'all

Finally some good news on WNS:
http://www.politickernj.com/paganm/34611/lautenberg-secures-19-million-funding-protect-bats-deadly-white-nose-syndrome

NPR had done a show on WNS a few months ago but they didn't mention these numbers concerning the dead bats. A large volume of deaths from any standpoint.

Well, at least the TVA is taking WNS seriously. All TVA caves/grottos in Southeast US are now closed. Seeing that they released this yesterday (and waited until late fall to comment), something must be up. If anyone was planing on caving east of the Mississippi river in the US this winter or next spring, please cancel...the bats need to be left alone.
http://www.tva.com/news/releases/octdec09/caves.htm

http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/publications/wildlife_health_bulletins/WHB_2009-03_WNS.pdfUpdate from Virginia as well:
Looks like they are finding the fungus in the cave sediment, but not on the bats, in a tested hibernacula.
(IMHO, not stirring up dust/sediment in caves looks like a good idea.)
:t:

Thanks for the update. I find this all very interesting.

Good summation of current WNS situation in US:
http://caves.org/WNS/WNS%20February2010NEWSwnsarticle.pdf
It's a .pdf file, and is presented in a 'caver's point of view'. There is a lot of good information about 'show caves' that haven't received much attention concerning WNS.

And here's the Missouri Dept. of Conservation's view:
http://alpineshop.blogspot.com/2010/02/official-info-on-bat-killing-white-nose.html
I guess if one sees both the caver's and the MO Dept. of Conservation's view, a pretty good picture of the issues around WNS come up. The 'biggy' to me seems to me that if people enter a closed cave, the infection is much worse due to bat the disturbance. I wish people would understand this, but a lot of times the $$$ wins. Too bad.

And of course, the inevitable happens...
http://caves.org/WNS/White%20Nose%20Confirmation%20Final1%20TN.pdf
WNS found in bats in Tennessee. This is from a private cave, and apparently was still open to the public. More bad news to come...(shaking my head in disgust).

It's such a shame. WNS is a terrible thing, one of my lecturers that I had at Uni was big on bats and I learned a lot about this through her. At least they had some sense to at least close off some caves and hopefully they'll continue to learn how much damage we're actually doing and either close off caves completely or have very strict small, infrequent tour groups that go through or something as a way to manage it. What a shame.

And one of the 'more bad news' is released:
http://caves.org/WNS/Hellhole%20Photo%20Trip.pdf
So, there may be a species specific advantage to Virginia Big Ears:
"Why? 1. It's a different species; 2. they roost in very dry areas (70% humidity as
confirmed by data loggers); 3. they roost in very cold areas - around 32 degrees F, including
occasionally below (again, temperature loggers at the sites have shown this consistently); 4. they
rouse quickly, which may indicate they don't need to burn the sort of fat reserves other species do
in order to amount an immune response."
Interesting final comment that no human intrusion was detected in this cave since 2007. Bat to bat transmission is now likely.

And in a 'odd' circumstance, the website that had been supported by the state of Tennessee concerning Morrill/Worley's cave has been wiped clean...including the cache.
Hmm...
I think there is some frank discussions going on about whether the WNS outbreaks are cave to cave (by people, equipment, etc.) or bat to bat. Looks like everyone is putting up silos and hunkering down. More bad news to come...

More bad news:
http://wolverines.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/endangered-bat-breeding-project-goes-terribly-wrong/
A breeding program for Virginia Big-Eared bats went bad. If anyone remembers some of the black footed ferret problems, this is oddly similar...too bad because there are a lot of people who know how to breed bats...

For a good synopsis of the 'human' issues around WNS in the North Alabama area, here is a blog by a former caver:
www.ilovebats.org
There are several other issues that have interesting implications here:
-state's rights
-responsibility of a land owner to limit disease transmission while facing economic hardship
-nonprofits with political agendas, etc.
-endangered species implications
-privacy/property issues.
Meanwhile, warm spring weather should slow the die-offs until the next cold spell.
Hopefully.

Admittedly, this was not the next state I expected to release WNS information:
http://mdc.mo.gov/nathis/caves/
Missouri advises that a single bat (little brown bat) was found with G. destructans on it's wing. If one looks at a map of the WNS epizootic:http://www.fws.gov/northeast/white_nose.html
a line of cold vs. too warm areas may be starting to form, that may show where the heat keeps G. destructans dormant (just my conjecture here).
Next winter will be very interesting for WNS issues.

Also, a nice map of probable transmission pathways:
http://www.esri.com/news/arcwatch/0909/graphics/feature4-lg.jpg
This is not good news.
This map was done in September of last year...pretty accurate guessing on their part.

the latest news

Hi,

I just received this information from “Bat Conservation International”. I though you may be interested to know. It is bout the latest news (19 April 2010) on westwards spread of white-nose syndrome in the USA. The attached map (19 April 2010 version) also received in the email.

This is the amail:

We have heartbreaking news from biologists monitoring White-nose Syndrome. History's worst bat-killing disease has now spread still farther west. After decimating bat populations in the eastern United States, WNS has now reached Missouri, on the edge of the American Midwest. It is also confirmed in Tennessee, at a cave in Great Smokey Mountain National Park that is home to the state's largest colony of endangered Indiana bats. And White-nose Syndrome has moved northward into Ontario and Quebec in Canada.

This terrible disease has killed more than a million bats since it was discovered at a single cave in northern New York State in February 2006. Mortality rates approaching 100 percent are reported at some hibernation sites, and entire colonies have been virtually destroyed. WNS has now spread across 12 U.S. states and biologists fear bats throughout North America are at imminent risk.

White-nose still defies the efforts of top scientists to find a cure or at least a way to slow it tragic spread. Bat Conservation International is working with many concerned partners on the search for solutions. Our White-nose Syndrome Emergency Response Fund supports critical research efforts. But much more is required to stop White-nose Syndrome before it drives bat species into extinction across Canada and the United States.
BCI's WNS grants program has provided initial funding to allow urgent research projects to get under way quickly - in most cases faster than government agencies can respond. We are examining existing research efforts to identify critical gaps in which our funding can have the greatest impact. BCI is also working closely with federal, state and private groups to set guidelines for White-nose Syndrome surveillance, monitoring and mitigation. To support WNS research and other bat conservation initiatives, click here
And for more information about White-nose Syndrome and all of BCI's conservation efforts, visit our website at www.batcon.org

regards

An interesting comment from someone on forums.caves.org:
"WNS is a syndrome with symptoms such as mass bat mortality and bats flying around in the winter dying on the landscape. A single bat that appears healthy, but with a small amount of fungus is an infection, not a syndrome. It may seem like splitting hairs, considering the history of WNS in the Northeast, but as more and different species and climates are incountered, we may see different results of Gd infections in bats. For example, no one is stating that there is WNS in Europe, just the fungus and occasional bat infections.

I may seem a little off base here but think about how we used to describe AIDS, a syndrome. At first we didn't know what was going on, so someone came up with AIDS to desribe the situation. Then HIV was found to be causing AIDS. With time more effective drugs and treatments are discoverd treat HIV, and some folks are able to stay healthy for quite awhile. In otherwords they are HIV positive, but do not have the symptoms of AIDS.

We may need to encourge the use of phrases like, Gd. positive for bats and WNS for caves with mortality.

I guess I'm hoping some day to hear things like, 'a bat was found in Cave X that tested positive for Gd. 3 years ago, yet to date there have been no bat mortalities in Cave X that we can attribute to Gd. or WNS' "
This seems like a good idea to me, as single bats don't make syndromes, just infections.
So the US National Wildlife Health Center (part of the USGS) came up with something close to this, with a lot of case definitions fors bats:
http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/disease_information/white-nose_syndrome/wns_definitions.jsp
This is great news for scientists, but creates a lot of confusion for the media, as they aren't always sure of the terminology they are supposed to use if a singe, or several bats are found infected in a certain area, but the G. destructans fungus isn't found anywhere else (soil, walls, water) in the cave/area.

And a bat in Oklahoma has shown the genetic marker for WNS (not necessarily infected):
http://oklahoma.watchdog.org/766/woodward-county-bat-may-have-white-nose-syndrome/ The bat did not have WNS, just an indicator that it may have been exposed to it. The bat was a cave myotis. This is a big jump for a bat to make from the closest WNS-infected area. It looks like the US Fish and Wildlife will need a bigger map to track all the infected counties:http://www.fws.gov/WhiteNoseSyndrome/
Some people had commented that they thought the western US states were overreacting to the 'WNS scare', but it looks like their actions were pretty much justified.