First it was the Bees, Now It's the Bats

These little mammals that most people don't even think about are under some severe duress from three different fronts right now. We're all familiar with bats, long a staple of horror movie and TV shows. And who hasn't seen something flying after sundown and wondered what a bird would be doing out after dark and then realized it was a bat. The typical response is to duck, a hold over from the the horror genres. Bats have a developed sonar that, unless they want to, will ensure they will miss landing on your head. And the reason you can sit out on your patio at night and see them flying after dark is the reason we'll miss them if they're gone. A bat can eat up to 600 mosquitoes in an hour. So having a colony in your neighborhood is a nice thing to prevent you from being eaten alive by the 6 legged population. A lot of people don't know that the replacement rate for bats is a lot slower than for other wildlife, one young is born to a female per year. That makes for a slow recovery from population inroads from human interference.

Such as the home owners who have long fought the bat battle. The bats, along with a long list of wildlife, are appreciative of the snug nests they can make for themselves in houses and human dwellings. Of course, they don't realize the damage they can do to the entire structure. But home owners realize this and bats have long been on the exterminators lists of 'pests' that they can eliminate from people's homes. Some are removed but most are killed as the most expedient way to solve the problem. Which means that the local insect population will balloon as the bat population declines. In the 1970s so many bat colonies had been decimated by extermination practises that a great many of the species had been put on the endangered species lists. After being placed on the endangered list the bat populations started to make a come back and rise in numbers.

At least, that used to be the case. As early as 2006 people had started noticing that hibernating bats had an unusual white coloration on their muzzles and wings. Where these discolored bats were found they were accompanied by a larger mortality rate in the bat population. This started on the East Coast but has since spread dramatically across the US and, at least, one reported case in Europe. It's been identified as a fungus, Geomyces destructans, that invades the skin of the bats. Before killing the bats the fungus causes them to behave erratically, not hibernating per their standard cycle, flying out in cold weather where they burn up their body fat reserves when there are no insects to feed them. In some of the colonies 90 to 100 percent of the population has been killed by this 'White Nose Syndrome' as it's being called. Researchers are looking for the cause of this new disease in the bat population and a cure but the fungus is killing whole bat populations that will take decades if not centuries to recover given their slow reproduction rate.

And, if that's not enough to make a bat retire to Mexico to get away from it all, they would'nt make it without running into the third menace, Wind Farms. Yep, those fantastic wind turbines that are going to save the human population from sitting in the dark not playing with their Wii, are killing bat populations and other flying species every day. The deaths are occurring in a couple of ways, they can hit the structure due to the unexpected changes in the air currents and the changes in air pressure around the turbine are causing internal physical injuries. Either way, the end result is the same.

With the loss of the bat populations the farming industry could lose billions of dollars through the loss of crops damaged by the insects that bats would have eaten. And if the bats aren't around to take care of the insects then the response will be to dump more poison in the form of insecticides onto the fields that grow our food.

Just like the bees, bats perform so many unconsidered services for us. The only way we will realize just what a friend they are to the planet will be when they're no longer in their eco-niche. Their unintended control of the insect population and helping to pollinate crops makes them a critical link in any ecosystem that they are a part of. We want to keep these little flying mammals around.

I believe it's time to put up a bat house in the back yard.