ELKINS, W.Va. — The tell tale ring around the nose is what they don’t want to see. Biologists from the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and other observers ventured into a number of caves across West Virginia during January and February looking for the horrible affliction. During recent years, the white nose fungus has killed hundreds of thousands of bats. Biologists have been helpless to do anything about it.
“There’s very little good news, but there is some good news,” said Division of Natural Resources Biologist Craig Stihler. “Even though most of our cave bats are taking a decline from the fungus, our Virginia Big Eared Bat numbers are doing just fine and don’t look to be affected by the fungus. In fact we just had our highest count ever this past year.”
For years, the Virginia Big Eared bat and the Indiana bat were Stihler’s worry. Both are on the endangered list and there were worries they might disappear. Out of nowhere, the white nose has caused him to shift his focus and concern.
“The white nose is caused by a fungus that doesn’t appear to be native to North America,” he said. “Bats in Europe don’t seem to be affected, but our bats have no immunity.”
Stihler said the American bats up and down the east coast have dropped by the hundreds of thousands. He compared it to the smallpox brought to the country by Europeans and Native Americans had no way to combat the virus.
“Our best site we lost 72 percent of the bats we had,” Stihler said. “Most of our sites we’ve lost 90 to 95 percent of the bats we had. It’s been devastating.”
During their most recent visit to caves in West Virginia, Stihler said one positive sign was the cave floor wasn’t littered with the carnage of dead bats. However, it’s deceptive, since there aren’t as many left to die.
“If you took somebody into a cave today, they’d have no idea there was a problem,” he said. “Everything looks normal if you didn’t know what should be there.”
The white nose has caused many bats to leave the cave early. They are flying with two feet of snow on the ground and no insects to replenish their strength, so they’re dying away from the cave.
Stihler’s concentration now is on those bats which have survived the initial introduction of the fungus. He’s hoping over time they will evolve an immunity to the scourge and rebuild the population.
“The bats we have surviving, some don’t have the fungus visibly and those that do don’t have it as bad as when it first showed up,” he said. “It gives us some hope maybe these bats are handling it a little better than the thousands that died.”
He’s hoping the immunity trait will also be passed along to offspring to hopefully overcome the fungus the way European bats have adapted to the condition.