White-nose syndrome has affected up to 97% of Maine's bat population

[jpak]

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/07/31/white-nose-syndrome-has-affected-up-to-97-of-maines-bat-population/

White-nose syndrome came to Maine at the start of the decade. Its effect on the bat population has been stark since then.

Since its initial appearance in New York in 2006, WNS has spread to 33 states and seven Canadian provinces. It first arrived in Maine in about 2010 or 2011, said Shevenell Webb, a furbearer and small mammal biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife.

Oxford County was the first to be affected in Maine, followed later by Piscataquis and Hancock counties in 2013.

According to Webb, the fungus grows on the skin tissues of hibernating bats in the winter. This rouses them from hibernation, causing them to consume their winter fat stores and starve before spring.

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[Bayard]

1. More climate change casualties....

[OnlinePoker]

2. Your proof?

From what I've read, the fungus that causes this prefers cooler temperatures. It exists in European and Asian species of bat without similar mortality events and is thought to have somehow made its way to North America in the last decade where the bat species here have no immunity (similar to how small pox decimated the indigenous communities when it hit here where there was no history of the disease).

[Bayard]

3. Many articles

I just pulled out this one:

WNS and other fungal pathogens—diseases— that harm wildlife are on the rise, due to increased human visits to previously remote places, which ups the risk that people will track pathogens out with them; and also climate change, which can create wetter conditions that allow some fungi to thrive. Amphibian chytrid fungus, for instance, has helped lead to declines or extinctions of an estimated 200 species of frogs around the globe in the last 30 years. And snake fungal disease is spreading across the eastern and midwestern United States.

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/bats-poised-for-a-comeback-from-white-nose-syndrome