Documenting the Decline

In 2006, biologists noticed a mysterious white fungus on the muzzles of northeastern bats. Three years later, over a million northeastern bats are dead, and a new disease, dubbed "White Nose Syndrome," has spread south from New England to the southern reaches of Virginia and West Virginia. The disease is creeping ever closer to huge bat colonies in Tennessee and Alabama, some of the last refuges for endangered and threatened species.

I live in Tennessee and have spent the majority of my life exploring caves and observing bats. I find them to be some of the most interesting animals I've even encountered. One of the highlights of my life (so far) was visiting a bat hibernaculum in the middle of the winter well before white nose syndrome became a threat. The air in the cave hovered around freezing, yet the walls were covered with a carpet of velvety bats that stirred as we crept through their winter home. I will never forget crawling at a snail's pace across a limestone ledge, bats completely covering the walls of either side of me. Their tiny bodies faintly stirred as they sensed an intruder sliding by. I felt awed at seeing a spectacle that few people have seen, and also awed by the natural design that allows so many delicate creatures (well over a million in that one cave) to thrive in such a harsh and unfriendly environment.

But I worry that the last time I visited the hibernaculum was the last time I will see such a wonder of nature. I sit here thinking about the bats in my favorite cave, bats that are currently hibernating in the heart of an Alabama mountain. Are they sick? Are they dying? The next time a person visits the cave, will the floor be littered with dead and dying bats? Or will the bats be spared for one more season?

I also wonder if the bats are spared for one more year, if the illness only makes it to middle Tennessee this winter, will it matter? If the disease stalls for one winter, or even two, what can humans possibly do to cure a disease that is affecting one of the least understood mammals in the world? How can humans possibly have any chance at stopping a total ecological disaster affecting an animal that most biologists can't easily find in the wild?

Biologists are working hard to try to figure out a way to fight the illness, but from what I can see, efforts are based on best guesses, and not on hard facts. Nobody yet knows any possible way to stop the disease, so researchers are grasping at straws to try to delay the spread to southern hibernacula. Some of the straws they are grasping at include asking cave explorers to simply give up caving entirely, an activity that for many is more than a sport, it's a lifestyle, one they simply will not give up. Some scientists are conducting experiments this winter to try to better understand how the disease spreads, but by the time they find an answer, it may be too late for any bat in the eastern United States.

I have many questions about this disease. Is it, like some are suggesting, an invasive species brought to the US from a cave in Europe? Is something else going on to make bats more susceptible to this devastating disease? Are humans contributing to the spread here in the US? Do decontamination protocols published by the US Fish and Wildlife Service really work?

I probably won't know the answers to those questions for many years. I also fear that before I find answers to my questions, most of the bats in the eastern United States will simply be gone.