A Lot Less Guano To Worry About

First came the report of massive bee colony die-offs. Now, we're receiving reports that bats are dying in record numbers across the eastern states of the US.

Dr Kunz, a biology professor at Boston University and one of a handful of bat specialists in America, is describing the terrifying advance of white-nose syndrome. In just four years the virulent fungal infection has spread from a single cave in upstate New York to massacre more than a million bats across the North-east.

Scientists and conservationists have been astonished by both the virulence and viciousness of the disease. When a cave becomes infected 75 per cent of the bat colony is likely to be wiped out during the first winter hibernation. After the next winter 90 per cent of the original colony will have succumbed.

This savage fatality rate threatens to destroy one of North America's top predators, leaving a gaping hole in the continent's food chain with as yet incalculable knock-on ecological effects. One senior US wildlife official has gone so far as to describe the massacre as "the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife caused by infectious disease in recorded history"...

I realize some people will say, "Big deal. What's a few less bats?" But these sorts of findings are highly important. It shows that something is askance in the overall environment. It seems to be slowly hemorrhaging.

More importantly, since everything is interconnected by almost invisible threads, the decimation of bee colonies or bats will have serious repercussions for us all. We have yet to realize the ripple effects as it moves up the food chain!