A mysterious fungus that has killed millions of bats in the eastern United States and left caves littered with their tiny carcasses has arrived in Northern California and appears poised to spread throughout the state, according to officials.
. Those initiatives have included restricting human access to caves where tens of thousands of bats spend their winters in hibernation, as well as continuing attempts to develop a vaccine.Unlike other areas of the country, where bats gather in large numbers, California bats tend to congregate in much smaller groups beneath freeway overpasses, on rocky hillsides, in attics and within the fronds of swaying palm trees.
“We’re hoping that its impacts in California won’t be as lightning fast and drastic as they have been in other parts of the nation,” Osborn said., or Pd for short, is named partly for the destruction it has wrought on the nation’s bat population. The fungus digests the skin and wings of hibernating bats, and is believed to have originated in Europe, where bats there evolved a resistance to it.
At night, they feast on mosquitoes — some of which transmit West Nile virus — and they also devour agricultural pests that damage cotton and corn crops. Recent studies estimate that the value of pest control provided by bats each year is at least $3.7 billion nationwide. They also pollinate the agave plant, which is used to make tequila, as well as the saguaro, the state cactus of Arizona.
The fungus can persist in cave environments for decades even in the absence of bats. It is usually transmitted through direct contact, but spores can cling to clothing, footwear and caving gear and in this manner, humans can unwittingly transport the spores to new locations. Another plan that was ultimately dismissed as being too impractical was using decommissioned military bunkers as artificial hibernation chambers for wintering bat populations. Temperature-controlled bunkers — which could be decontaminated in the summer — would have enabled biologists to monitor behavior and administer possible treatments for the disease.
Armed with electronic bat detection devices, Miguel Ordenana, a mammal expert at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, recently confirmed at least five species of bats in the greater Los Angeles area. He has spotted them “flying over every neighborhood in the region — from South Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley to El Segundo and downtown,” he said.
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