Fort Drum Fish and Wildlife staff works with other agencies to research deadly disease

By Spc. Osama Ayyad, 10th Mountain Division JournalistJuly 23, 2015

New York's bat community examined
1 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Samantha Hoff, a scientist with the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation, examines a little brown bat from the community near LeRay Mansion on post. This community of bats has shown resiliency to white-nose syndrome, which has kill... (Photo Credit: U.S. Army)
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Bat study
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FORT DRUM, N.Y. (July 23, 2015) -- Members of the Fort Drum Fish and Wildlife Program, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service met July 15 near LeRay Mansion on post to study a community of little brown bats. This group of bats has shown some resiliency to a deadly disease called white-nose syndrome and may provide some hope for scientists.

The disease was first noticed in New York in a cave in Albany County, where the remains of hundreds of bats were found on the cave floor in 2007. White-nose syndrome has caused a severe drop in the population of bat communities, including species like the northern long-eared bat and little brown bat, which have lost 95-99 percent of their population to the disease in the region.

Local, state, and federal wildlife agencies all say that it is unlikely that they will ever know how the species of fungus that causes the deadly disease in bats arrived in the North Country; however, they have some thoughts.

One of the prevailing theories, according to Kyla West, a Fort Drum Fish and Wildlife technician, is that recreational cave divers who visited European caves may have unwittingly carried some of the fungus on their equipment to the caves near Albany.

Carl Herzog, a state DEC biologist, said that stowaway bats on ships and planes or exotic pets transported from Europe also may have been the culprit.

Herzog said European bats seem to have evolved in the presence of the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, but North American bats have not, which makes the fungus an invasive species.

The disease hits bats the hardest during hibernation when they are the most vulnerable. In order to survive winters, bats hibernate and slowly consume the energy in their fat stores. However, if impacted by white-nose syndrome, their metabolism burns through those stores faster than normal to combat the infection. When their fat stores run out prematurely, bats awake from hibernation and leave their communities to find insects and other food items, which aren't available until spring. This typically results in the bats either starving or dying from the cold out on the landscape or near the cave entrances.

"The first two hints we had that something was wrong was a number of calls from the public about bats flying in the winter and an inquiry from (the New York State) Health Department about an increase in the number of bats found in snow banks," Herzog said. "We didn't know why there were so many until we visited the Howe show cave in Albany County."

Before and after photos of the show cave depicting the massive reduction of the bat population there went viral on the Internet. Herzog said that North America's first case of the disease was in that area.

Initially, New York's DEC tried to feed bats that have prematurely left hibernation, but it wasn't practical and half of the bats died, Herzog said. Feeding bats during the winter also disrupts the animal's reproduction cycle.

Each ecosystem has its own checks and balances, he said. When a change affects one player in the game, the balance is lost, which can cause a chain reaction. If the population of bats dies off, their consumption of insects decreases, increasing the numbers of insects. The effect trickles down the food chain, and the more insects there are, the more likely they will spread communicable diseases.

Herzog plans to attend a national meeting to discuss possible treatments or prevention methods. The disease has spread across bat communities throughout the East Coast, and it has crossed the Mississippi River in Missouri and Minnesota.

The good news is that Fort Drum's little brown bats seem to be extraordinarily resilient to the disease, and that is why biologists from the different agencies were assisting Fort Drum. They are interested to see how these bats are surviving and what information can be gained at the colony.

The LeRay Mansion community of bats likely has been there since the 1980s, said Chris Dobony, the Fort Drum fish and wildlife biologist who has taken charge of the community. This population primarily consists of adult female bats and their young, often referred to as a maternity colony.

The Fort Drum Fish and Wildlife Management Program was aware of the maternity colony and let them reside in LeRay Mansion until 2004, when their existence in the attic and a compartment above the kitchen became a health concern as more guests were using LeRay Mansion for temporary housing.

Fort Drum's Fish and Wildlife Program staff took an initiative to provide the bat community, then numbering approximately 1,500, with an alternative residence to avoid a potential conflict. They built the "bat house," which the bats moved to on their own over the next few years. LeRay Mansion was then sealed up for the most part to prevent the bats from getting back into or near the living spaces.

In approximately 2008, the impacts of white-nose syndrome hit the LeRay maternity colony hard, and the population dropped to about 10 percent, down to about 150 animals. However, since that time, the population has been increasing in small increments. It is now back to more than 200 animals. It is this stabilization and small increase that has biologists trying to figure out what may be different at this colony.

Shortly before sundown, Fort Drum Fish and Wildlife technicians put together a bat interception device, which they then placed on the exterior of the bat house.

Fort Drum and other agency scientists set up shop nearby. Hesitant at first, the thumb-sized bats left their home and were intercepted by the device. Gloved scientists with headlamps reached into the device, which was partially made out of clear plastic sheets, and gently transferred the bats to a brown paper bag where they would remain until they were processed.

Scientists measured each bat's size and weight, they noted gender and severity of fungal infection, and they tagged bats to identify them in the future. DEC members took small tissue samples from several bats for DNA analysis by punching a small hole in the bats' wings.

Herzog said the bats often damage their wings flying through forested areas and they heal very quickly, so this small tissue sample causes them no real concern. Information from the analysis will be shared with partners across the continent.

Raymond Rainbolt, Fort Drum's Fish and Wildlife Program director, said that more than 6 million bats have died from white-nose syndrome, and that it is important to take action sooner than later.

Robin Niver, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species biologist who participated that night, said that the Department of Defense has been a great ally in the multi-agency initiative to combat the disease.

"Fort Drum is the tip of the spear in the Northeast in the battle against white-nose syndrome," Niver said. "It has one of the best long-term studies of the disease, which allows us to learn how to fight back."

Samantha Hoff, one of the DEC scientists who took tissue samples, was more optimistic than most. With Fort Drum's "night knights" in mind, Hoff believes that the bat population will adapt and overcome. After all, they are a Fort Drum community.

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