Oregon Public Broadcasting

When bats started turning up dead in New York several years ago, biologists thought it was a new outbreak of rabies. It turned out to be something else. A mysterious killer scientists call white-nose syndrome is killing bats by the tens of thousands.

Oregon biologists now fear the bat disease may be headed our way. Oregon Field Guide’s Ed Jahn has the story.

In a moonlit field outside of Burns, Oregon, Carson Brown pries a western long-eared bat out of a net.

He holds it up -- wings spread wide, the furry bat chomping helplessly at the night air.

Carson Brown: “Pretty cool-looking bat, these large ears here, this is a healthy bat, you can tell just by the general condition.

A healthy bat is good news for biologists studying Oregon’s bats. It’s also good news for those who like to camp and hike without being eaten alive by bugs.

A single bat can eat 600 insects an hour. 

But Pat Ormsbee, the biologist leading this effort for the Forest Service and BLM, says a mysterious ailment called white-nose syndrome could soon devastate these efficient insect-eaters.

Pat Ormsbee: “Our biggest fear is extinction, that we literally see our bat species die off in the Northwest. It’s not an unrealistic fear given how fast this is moving.

Ormsbee says the first reports that something was wrong came in 2006, in upstate New York.

Biologists were stumped by scenes of bats flying around in the daytime, crashing into rooftops and floundering helplessly in the snow.

Pat Ormsbee: “Reports started coming in of weird bat behavior, bats coming out in winter. People were going, whoa, something’s not right in the bat world.”

Fast forward a few years and white nose, named for a white fungus scientists found on the nose and skin of its victims, has now killed over a million bats up and down the east coast.

The disease has killed 100 percent of some long established bat colonies.

Ormsbee says in the 5 years since it was discovered, the fungus has spread steadily westward, making it as far as Oklahoma last year.

Pat Ormsbee: “It’s now closer to Seattle than it is to the place where it was first discovered.”

Little brown bats in NY hibernation cave. Most of the bats exhibit fungal growth on their muzzles. Photo by Nancy Heaslip, NY Dept of Environmental Conservation.

What makes white-nose hard to stop is that bats move around with the seasons, and mingle with other bats in large colonies, often in caves, where thousands of bats huddle together each winter.

The fungus that causes white nose thrives in these cold, dark caves, and once it works its way under the skin of bats it irritates the animals to the point of sleeplessness.

Pat Ormsbee: “And we think it causes them to arouse during wintertime and they basically burn up their fat reserves and starve to death before winter is over and spring comes and they can find bugs to feed on."

Scientists think they’ve traced white nose to Europe, but for some reason, bats there aren’t affected in the same way.

How the fungus made the leap to the U.S.?  Scientists don’t know.

How to stop it? They don’t know that yet either.

Pat Ormsbee: “It’s basically, just wiping out bats. We often think of bats as a group when there’s actually many species. And we now have 9 species of bats that have been affected by WNS with no resistance."

Hibernating little brown bat with white muzzle typical of White-nose syndrome. Location: PA, USA Photographer: Greg Turner, Pennsylvania Game Commission

At the bat survey site near Burns, researcher Joe Szewczak listens in with a computer that identifies the high frequency calls of bats passing in the night.

For now, bats still fill the Oregon sky.

Joe Szewczak “Let me play this back for you -- search phase -- approach phase, and the final terminal buzz -- and presumably it’s caught an insect there.”

Orsbee admits that bats don’t engender a whole lotta’ love. It’s probably a rare person that thinks its fun to stay out late next to a buggy pond, listening to what flies by. 

But Ormsbee believes we’ll all feel the loss if bats disappear.

Pat Ormsbee: “One of the things to understand is that bats eats insects, so the potential for crop damage, forest infestation of insects, of diseases that can be carried by insects there is a potential for this to have a domino affect."

Ormsbee says it’s not certain that Oregon’s bats will die. But given how fast white-nose is spreading, biologists are going on the assumption that the bats flying around tonight -- may not be here much longer.

Ed Jahn takes a deeper look at white-nose syndrome and the controversial move to close some caves to the public as a precaution against white-nose. His story will air on Oregon Field Guide Thursday night at 8.30.