Expendable-2 kills endangered bats

My older daughter sent me a link yesterday about how the producers of the movie The Expendables - 2 had destroyed the habitat of bats in Bulgaria.  Bats are not on my daughter's list of cute animals, but she knows they are essential to our world.

Bats are already being decimated in the country by white-nose syndrome, which keeps bats awake during what should be their hibernation, Thus they die from exhaustion and malnutrition.  In New York's Hudson Valley region, more than a million bats have been lost since 2006.

Why save bats?  Check out what Bat World has to say:

Bats  are clean, gentle and intelligent, they are vital to the ecosystem, and they enhance our lives in many ways. Fruit and nectar bats bring us approximately 450 commercial products and over 80 different medicines through seed dispersal and pollination. Up to 98% of all rainforest regrowth comes from seeds that have been spread by fruit bats. Insect-eating bats are literal vacuum cleaners of the night skies, eating millions upon millions of harmful bugs. They protect us by eating insect-pests that destroy crops as well as insects that cause human disease.

So go ahead and sign the petition at Bat World, and let the producers know you'll be boycotting their movie.

One million brown bats dead

Wired Science has an update on the White Nose Syndrome that is decimating the brown bat population in New England and elsewhere.    I first wrote about this a year and a half ago and the news isn't getting any better.  More than one million bats in 14 states and two Canadian provinces now report infestation.  New York has lost more than 90% of their brown bat population.

Bats get a bad rap.  They eat tremendous amounts of insects and help pollinate plants.  And really, they are a sight to behold at sunset.  Check out this amazing video from from Austin, Texas.

New York times covers bat disease

This morning I saw that the NY Times has reported on the mysterious bat disease wiping out up to 90% of the bat population in parts of New England. By this evening, it was the second most frequently emailed article in the Times. iIm glad that other people are finding this situation worthy of concern. Unfortunately there wasn't much more information about a cause and a cure than I had unearthed.

In the Adirondacks, mammal specialist Al Hicks was quoted as he was trying for the perfect picture of concentrations of bats: "“It’s just that I know I’m never going to see these guys again,” he said. “We’re the last to see this concentration of bats in our lifetime.”

Addendum: the bat in my previous post is either a big brown or a pipstrelle. The bat in this post is a little brown bat.

Ready for a buggy summer?

Bats eat their body weight in insects every night.
Photo: endangered Indiana bat

If bats are in trouble, so are we

They can live for twenty-five years and only have one baby every twelve months. They eat insects that plague humans and they help to pollinate plants. And 90% of them may have died in some places in New England this winter.

Little brown bats, Northern long-eared, Eastern pipistrelle, and the federally endangered Indiana bat are being stricken by a disease biologists are naming White Nose Syndrome, although whether it's a virus, a bacteria or a fungus is not yet clear. These species are the first infected, but biologists fear that all species of bats are vulnerable.

Sick bats were first discovered only a little more than a year ago in a cave near Albany, New York. In one cave, the population of bats plummeted from 1,300 to 38. By February, sick bats had also been found in Vermont and Massachusetts. By the middle of the month, the Boston Globe reported infected bats had been found in two caves in Western Massachusetts near Chester.

"No one has a clue what is going on," said Tom French, assistant director of the natural heritage and endangered species program of the Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife, who helped find sick bats in Massachusetts."

Caves where sick bats are found are being closed to the public, not because humans are in danger but because it's not known how the disease is being spread.

This month, sick bats were discovered in caves in West Virginia.

With the stress on bees, our main pollinators, what's happening to bats is a major cause for concern.

Bats Revisited

My sister and her family were coming came over for Thanksgiving and I was gathering together my rarely used serving dishes. One dish I wanted-- broad at the base, narrower at the top-- was on the very top of my cupboard and I had to fetch a stepladder to take it down. I could hear something rattling inside. When I looked in, I saw a small, dessicated brown bat-- just a patch of fur and black twiggy legs and wings. So at least one of the bats that circled my house this summer didn't make it out alive.

I may never be a bat connoisseur but I was saddened to stumble upon a story about a colony of rare fruit bats almost totally wiped out by armed "sportsmen" in Cyprus. Eventually I found a site in Australia, the Tolga Bat Hospital. The pictures are from their site.

Bats in the house

I have just combed the Internet looking for pictures of cute bats and let me tell you, they're not easy to find. I recognize that an unpleasant childhood experience and too many Dracula movies have shaped my perception. Surely baby bats are cute to their mothers?

I've had a bat in my apartment every night for a week-- a different bat each night, I think: one was VERY BIG and flew high; one was smaller and flew in the middle range, then another big one, then another small one, et cetera et cetera.

The first night I laughed at myself as I crawled on my hands and knees from the living room to the kitchen to open the porch screen door so the bat could get out, which eventually it did.

The second night I slunk along the walls to repeat the process.

By tonight, I'm, like, Gosh, it's hard to relax with a bat in the house. I actually walked to the porch door to open it.

My cats have been unsurprisingly useless, in fact only mildly interested in the whole bat affair.

I know bats are good for the environment-- they eat tons of bugs-- and they're mammals, they nurse their babies, they're not aggressive and some species are endangered.

Still, I'd rather not have them in the house, but from what I've researched, it's pointless to try to find where they are nesting in the house and seal them in because they have babies and they would die inside the walls and not smell very good. It has to be done between November 15 and March 15. I will try to do it before the holidays. I don't expect my growing (and possibly temporary) sang-froid will extend to my company.
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Two hours later: I'm talking to my friend and fellow Sagittarian Holly on the phone.
"By the way, do you know anything about bats?" I said.
"Bats! I had a frigging bat in my house for three days," she said. "I was starting to think I'd just have to outlive it."