N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission biologist, Gabrielle Graeter, studies an Eastern red bat in the Pisgah National Forest Monday night as state and federal biologists help monitor and prevent the spread of white-nose syndrome. / John Fletcher/Jfletcher@citizen-times.com
How to tell
• Signs include white fungus, especially on the bat's nose but also on the wings, ears or tail, damaged wings including holes in the wing tissue, bats flying outside during the day in temperatures at or below freezing, bats clustered near the entrance of hibernation sites and dead or dying bats on the ground or on buildings, trees or other structures.
What to avoid How to help
• Stay out of caves and mines. White nose syndrome is thought to be transmitted primarily from bat to bat but there is a strong possibility it may also be transmitted by humans carrying the fungus from cave to cave on their clothing and gear.
• If you see a bat that you suspect has white nose syndrome, contact Gabrielle Graeter at the N.C. Wildlife Resources at Gabrielle. email@example.com or 273-9097; Sue Cameron at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at susan_cameron@ fws.gov or 258-3939 Ext. 224; or e-mail whitenose firstname.lastname@example.org.
• Funding for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission's wildlife diversity work, like monitoring the bat population, comes primarily from private donations. For more information or to donate, visit www.ncwildlife.org.
• For more information, visit www.fws.gov/whitenose syndrome.
PISGAH FOREST — Using only her headlamp to illuminate the little brown bat in her hands, Gabrielle Graeter carefully spread open the animal's wings.
As the bat shrieked and chewed at her white gloves, Graeter hunched over the small light box on the table in front of her and methodically looked for any damage to the bat's thin black wings, one sign that it could be infected with white-nose syndrome. It's a disease biologists say could have devastating impacts at multiple ecological levels.
“We haven't detected it, but it could be here already,” said Graeter, a biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and one of a team of scientists catching and monitoring the bats on the Davidson River on Monday night. “If they haven't (been infected) already, it's going to be happening soon.”
The infection, named for the white fungus that forms on the faces and wings of affected bats, has been called the most serious threat to wildlife in a century. It's killed hundreds of thousands of bats in the Northeast, where it was first discovered in 2006. Right now, there's no treatment for the disease.
Although it has not been detected in North Carolina, white-nose syndrome was found in bats in a cave on the Tennessee side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in April, and has shown up in other parts of Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
During routine monitoring near Whittier in Swain County this summer, Graeter and her colleagues found bats whose wings appeared to be damaged by white-nose syndrome, although presence of the fungus won't be able to be confirmed until the bats hibernate this winter.
“We'd be very happy if we didn't have it,” Graeter said, “but we're prepared for it.”
Monitoring the bats
Graeter and other scientists from the state wildlife resources commission, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Furman University and volunteers, are monitoring bat populations at more than 20 sites around Western North Carolina this summer.
On Monday night, the group placed two sets of thin, nylon nets over the Davidson River at the state fish hatchery. At about 8:30 p.m., bats started swarming around the river, looking for food and water, and an unlucky few became entangled in the netting.
The biologists waded into the river and carefully removed the bats by the light of their headlamps and put them in brown paper bags. At a makeshift laboratory in the parking lot, the bats were weighed and inspected for sex, age and any suspicious markings before being tagged and released into the sky.
The data will give scientists an idea of bat populations before, during and after white-nose syndrome hits the area, along with allowing them to look for suspicious wing damage. None of the bats caught Monday showed signs of damage from white-nose syndrome.
“This (monitoring) has already been going on anyway, but now that white-nose syndrome is in the picture, we are taking extra care to monitor and determine changes in bat populations,” Graeter said.
During the winter, scientists monitor roughly 115 N.C. caves, many of which have been closed to the public to help stop the spread of the disease. White-nose syndrome attacks bats hibernating in caves and mines, where the fungus thrives, and causes them to come out of hibernation early. Bats that scientists think have been affected by the fungus are sent to laboratories for testing.
“Researchers are trying to find some kind of treatment, some potential cure, but so far nothing has proven effective enough to use in the field,” Graeter said. “We are hopeful that if we can't do anything about white nose right now, what we can do is understand what's happening as an effect of white nose.”
Scientists said white-nose syndrome could be devastating when it does show up here. North Carolina is home to 17 species of bats, 10 of which hibernate in caves and three of which are endangered.
It's still unclear if some species of bats are more affected by the fungus than others, but biologists have seen 90-100 percent mortality of bats in several caves in the Northeast. Populations of endangered Indiana bats have already started declining in New York since white-nose showed up there.
“Bats are already threatened and this extra hit could make some species go extinct,” said Kendrick Weeks, mountain wildlife diversity supervisor with the N.C. Wildlife Commission.
Bats play an important role in controlling insects. Without predation from bats, insect pests could increase, causing problems for farmers and forests. A single little brown bat can catch and eat 600 mosquitoes in an hour.
Bats are an important part of the ecosystem, which is being exposed to other pests, invasive species and additional threats, said Sue Cameron, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “It's like Jenga,” she said referring to the popular game. “How many things can we start removing before things start collapsing?”