For those of you following the "White-Nose Syndrome" afflicting the bats in the eastern US, this is the most depressing news yet...


The latest models predict the little brown bat, the most numerous in the nation, could be extinct in 7 to 30 years.

"That's incredibly fast," said Greg Turner, the Pennsylvania Game Commission's endangered-mammal specialist. "Unprecedented is the word."

"Humans have done a pretty good job of killing a lot of animals,
like the buffalo," he said, "but nothing like this has ever been
recorded. It's pretty bleak. That's the only way to say it."

The article goes on to say



"I think Pennsylvania bats are done," Reeder said. White-nose affects six of the state's eight species. "Big browns
will probably be OK. Our tree bats will probably be OK," she said.
"Everybody else is going to go."
Read the full article at http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20100126_Solving_the_mystery_of_the_dying_bats.html?viewAll=y

What is frustrating is that congress has only allocated $1.9 million to fight White-Nose Syndrome.

These sites have more info on WNS:

http://www.caves.org/WNS/index.htm
http://www.batcon.org/index.php/what-we-do/white-nose-syndrome.html

Dave