White Nose Disease Confirmed In Maine - Disease Present In All New England States

BANGOR, Maine — A disease that could eventually kill three-quarters of the northeastern U.S. population of hibernating bats has been confirmed in Maine for the first time. State and federal wildlife officials announced during a Tuesday phone press conference that bats infected with White-Nose Syndrome were found in two Oxford County hibernacula, or wintering shelters, during surveys conducted during the winter hibernation season.

Until Tuesday’s announcement, Maine and Rhode Island had been the only New England States without confirmed cases of WNS. Last week Nova Scotia was added to the list of Canadian provinces — joining Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick — where the disease has been detected.

And that’s bad news. “In general, what we’re seeing across the northeast if we look sort of at the affected species as a whole, not just , little brown bats, it’s somewhere in the 75 percent range, the mortality that the researchers are estimating,” Ann Froschauer, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service national White-Nose Syndrome communications leader, said.

Some hypothesize that a drastically reduced bat population will have far-reaching implications. Bats are voracious consumers of insects and a recent study published in Science magazine estimates that bats provide a pest-control service that saves the U.S. agricultural industry more than $3 billion a year.

EDIT

http://new.bangordailynews.com/2011/05/24/outdoors/white-nose-syndrome-found-in-maine-bats/

for the first time in ten years there are no bats in my bat house. Since I first put it up it has housed a mixed breeding colony of Brazilian freetailed and evening bats in the spring and summer months. One evening last year there was a bat in my yard unable to fly, and the others frantically circled around it, as if trying to encourage it to get up. This year, no bats.