Bats have creeped us out since man and bat first met. But not many of us know just how important bats are to mankind’s existence and fewer of us know that at least five species of bats are battling an epidemic that could have devastating consequences for both bat and man.

To quote the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, “Worldwide, bats play critical ecological roles in insect control, plant pollination and seed dissemination” (seed dissemination is critical to rain forest regeneration). There are 25 species of North American bat.

Barbara French, a biologist at Bat Conservation International (BCI) in Austin, gave this capsule on the bond between bat and farmer: “A colony of 150 Big Brown bats can protect farmers from up to 33 million rootworms, which are serious crop pests. Many bats feed on moths. The moths lay eggs that develop into caterpillars, like corn earworms and army worms, which feed on a huge variety of crops.” And bats love mosquitoes, too.

That something was terribly wrong in the bat world was first noticed in February, 2006 in Howe’s Cave, 40 miles west of Albany, N.Y. A photograph of hibernating bats showed many had an unusual white dust on their noses, ears and wings; the find was named White-Nose Syndrome (WNS) and in less than 12 months WNS had traveled 450 miles south from Howe’s Cave. The epidemic has now spread to more than 65 caves in nine New England and Mid-Atlantic states and several caves in Canada are suspected of harboring the fungus.

Gray bats and Virginia Big-eared bats are severely threatened: even before WNS they were federally listed as endangered species. Indiana bats are now losing population, nearly to the levels of the endangered Virginia big-eared bats.

Despite the continuing search to find the source of this condition by numerous laboratories and state and federal biologists, the cause of the bat deaths remains unknown.

There really isn’t much to go on; nobody knows what is causing WNS … cavers, pesticides, global warming and more may or may not be the cause. But we do know these three facts:

• Bats hibernate in cool or cold caves and abandoned mines;

• WNS is a cold-loving fungus; and

• During hibernation bats, like all other hibernating mammals, live off their stored fat reserves.

Apparently WNS triggers a desire for food in bats, breaking their hibernation cycle; those that are strong enough to do so struggle to fly out into the cold winter environment in search of non-existent insects. Those bats, too weak to fly, die and fall to the ground. Again, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: “We have found sick, dying and dead bats in unprecedented numbers in and around caves and mines from Vermont to Virginia. In some hibernaculum, 90 to 100 percent of the bats are dying.”

Melia Bayless, another biologist at BCI, says “WNS is a huge scientific mystery … it’s a puzzle. We don’t know yet whether the fungus is the cause (originating on the bat) or whether it’s opportunistic (picked up somewhere else) bu susceptible bats. We don’t know how the fungus is transmitted but we do know other fungus spores (in mammals and animals) can be transmitted and held for a long time.

Bird and bat deaths from wind farms have been among the few environmental negatives of this growing source of alternative energy. But a new study offers hope that a solution can be found.

A new study of the interaction between bats and wind turbines at the Casselman Wind Power Project found that turning off the turbines during low wind periods reduced bat mortality by more than 70 percent.

Iberdrola Renewables, owner of the Casselman wind farm in southwestern Pennsylvania, partnered with independent conservation group Bat Conservation International (BCI) to collect the data. From late July to mid-October 2008, Iberdrola Renewables and BCI researchers conducted a controlled experiment in which selected wind turbines at the Casselman project were stopped during relatively low wind-speed nights in the late summer and early fall.

“Shutting down turbines at certain wind speeds during periods when bats appear most vulnerable at this Northeastern U.S. wind farm may have the potential to be a cost-effective way to reduce the impact on bats during their late summer migration season,” Andy Linehan, wind permitting director for Iberdrola Renewables, said in a statement. He said Iberdrola Renewables “looks forward to a second year of the study to confirm what appears to be very good results with modest (power) generation lost.”

The research is being conducted as part of the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative (BWEC), a coalition of the American Wind Energy Association, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and BCI. The cooperative’s work focuses on identifying and addressing potential wind energy impacts on bats. This study is one of a series of collaborations with BWEC at five Iberdrola Renewables sites.

Although it was crucial for this study, Iberdrola Renewables cautioned that curtailing turbine operations is not likely to be the complete solution to reducing the impact on bats in all circumstances or locations. But the company believes it may be a practical solution at some northeastern U.S. sites where elevated bat mortality has been a particular concern, company officials said.

Dr. Ed Arnett, conservation scientist at BCI and program coordinator for the BWEC, led a team of scientists that tested increasing the minimum wind speed necessary for turbines to begin spinning and producing electricity into the power grid.

“We hypothesized that bat fatalities could be lowered substantially by reducing the amount of turbine operating hours during low wind periods when bats are most active. We found that bat kills were reduced from 53 to 87 percent on any given night at turbines that were partially curtailed during low wind nights compared to those that were fully operational,” Arnett said in a statement.

Related links:

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday that government stimulus money will help fund 129 projects in the Southwest region, bringing new buildings, energy efficiency improvements and habitat restoration to national refuges and public and private projects in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona.

The value of the projects, which are expected to generate new jobs, will come to nearly $30 million. The FWS has previously announced projects funded by stimulus money in Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Washington, Nebraska, Colorado and Alaska. For more info on projects in those states see the FWS website , which lists all the projects being funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Among the Southwest developments:

• The Texas Chenier Plain Refuge Complex will get a new headquarters building and visitors’ facility, which were destroyed last fall by Hurricane Ike.
• Fisheries in Arizona will receive $2.3 million for modernizing and energy renovations.
• Restorative work at the Bahia Grande wetlands at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, including two bridges to and other improvements to benefit water birds.
• Jobs for high school and college students at a variety of refuges in all four states.
• Canal improvements at Havasu WIldlife Refuge in Arizona that will improve water delivery and benefit more than 4,000 acres of refuge lands
• Salt Cedar Removal on Bitter Lake WIldlife Refuge in New Mexico that will promote native shrub growth and increase biodiversity and wetland habitat.

The projects represent long-standing needs (with the exception of the hurricane repairs) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It selected the projects based on their merit and ability to generate a large number of jobs quickly.

The public can follow the projects on the Interior Department’s Recovery website, and submit questions, ideas or concerns pertaining to the projects. See a full list of funded projects at the website.

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

This week the Obama Administration shored up the Endangered Species Act, restoring a rule rescinded by the Bush Administration that requires federal agencies to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service when their activities could harm threatened or endangered species.

Obama announced the decision on Tuesday at the Interior Department, noting that “the work of scientists and experts in my administration, including right here in the Interior Department, will be respected.”

It was a statement that many conservationists could embrace as they work to maintain habitats, preserve federal park lands and stabilize animal populations under threat such as the Rocky Mountain gray wolves, the American Pika, polar bears, Atlantic lobsters, salmon and seals, among others.

But the week began with a poignant note about the perils facing wildlife in the United States when an aged jaguar — possibly the very last jaguar living in the wild in the United States — had to be euthanized.

The wild cat, known as Macho B and believed to be 15 to 16 years old had recently been outfitted with a radio collar by Arizona state authorities. When he was later discovered to be suffering from kidney failure, the state game officials had the 118-pound cat euthanized.

It’s not known if the stress of the earlier capture contributed to the jaguar’s death; his demise though is believed to mark the probable extinction of the jaguar in the United States, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

“Macho B was the only jaguar known to be living in the United States; he had been photographed repeatedly since 1996 in southern Arizona. Three other jaguars, at least one of them thought to have been killed in Mexico, have also been recorded in the United States since 1996, but none are known to be living now,” the center reported in a statement.

“This is a major setback for the jaguar, particularly given that the border wall is making it much harder for jaguars to reoccupy their ancestral homes in the southern United States,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. “We are deeply saddened.”

Bleak as the situation appears, Robinson believes there is hope for a restored jaguar population because the Center for Biological Diversity has already sued to try to get a federal recovery plan in place. The non-profit is due in federal district court in Tucson on March 23 to discuss its lawsuit against a Bush-era U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refusal to develop a recovery plan and designate “critical habitat” for the jaguar.

Jaguars continue to populate parts of Mexico. They once ranged from the Bay Area of California to the Appalachian Mountains in the United States. Their population was decimated by decades of habitat loss, hunting for pelts and “persecution for fear of livestock losses,” including “systemic killing” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Robinson.

Because there are still wild jaguars in northern Mexico, a recovery plan for the animal in the United States remains feasible, he said.

“The border wall doesn’t extend across the entire border, as yet. The recovery plan could look at many different options, including reintroduction and removal of all or portions of the wall,” he said.

“A recovery team developing the recovery plan would identify their best remaining habitats. Potential areas include the Sky Islands in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico (where this and other jaguars recently known to be in the U.S. lived) and the Gila National Forest and Mogollon Rim in respectively western NM and eastern AZ. But the team could also look further afield, since jaguars once ranged from east to west coast,” he added.

“Macho’s legacy should be action to develop a science-based recovery plan and protection of the areas they call home to ensure their survival.”

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

It’s about jobs.

America’s newly inaugurated President, Barack Obama, has a Herculean task ahead of him, no question. Virtually everyone from the far right to the hard left agrees that if the new leader wants to rescue America’s economy, it’s all about jobs.

And as Mr. Obama promised, the buzz is about green jobs – a green economy, greening our buildings, revamping parks, wildlife refuges and public spaces. These involve “shovel-ready” jobs, some of which can be started within 90 days of Obama’s inauguration, say eco-leaders, who’ve been lobbying Washington to fund what could amount to an environmental restoration of the United States.

Last week, when the U.S. Congress presented its $825 billion recovery package, legislators gave the first hint that they are listening. The package proposes $90 billion for infrastructure and $54 billion to support renewable-energy production and research — all aimed at modernizing the economy and stopping the river of pink slips that claimed two million jobs in just the last four months of 2008. As Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. David Obey, (D-Wisc.), pointed out – without the recovery plan, the country could face 12 percent unemployment in 2009.

That’s precisely why now is the time to bust out the shovels and dig in, say people like Noah Kahn, manager of the national wildlife refuge program for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife. We’ve definitely got our work cut out for us, he adds. And what’s being proposed by Congress is only the tip of the iceberg, in terms of what could be achieved in a green-jobs economy.

Defenders of Wildlife has joined with 21 other groups in the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE) to propose a massive, ambitious jobs-creation plan, a Green Jobs for Refuges plan,  which CARE is urging Congress to include in its economic recovery package.

And considering that CARE is made up of nonprofits ranging from the American Birding Association and American Fisheries Society to the Nature Conservancy and the National Wildlife Refuge Association to the National Rifle Association and Ducks Unlimited – a broad mix of environmentalists, wildlife conservationists and sportsmen – its 14 million combined members carry considerable freight among lobbyists on Capitol Hill.

CARE calls for a two-prong plan – one portion on “Greening Facilities” and another for “Habitat Restoration.” The details:

• Spend $443 million for removing non-native, invasive species and restoring native habitat. Create 5,644 jobs

• Spend $243 million for dramatically improving the energy efficiency of existing facilities. Create 5,103 jobs

• Spend $201 million for new “green” construction of visitor centers, environmental education and equipment storage facilities. Create: 5,025 jobs

• Spend $60 million for increasing renewable energy capacity, such as tapping solar, wind and geothermal energy to power refuge facilities. Create 1,260 jobs

• Total: Nearly 20,000 jobs.

“With about $950 million or a $1 billion investment, about 20,000 jobs could be created in 90 days,” says Kahn, who works closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS), which oversees 550 national wildlife refuges.