Dan Ashe, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had the following Op-Ed piece published under his name in yesterday's Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ashe-bats-fungus-20111012,0,4510597.story
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PYoungbaer wrote:Dan Ashe, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had the following Op-Ed piece published under his name in yesterday's Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ashe-bats-fungus-20111012,0,4510597.story
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is leading a cooperative international effort of more than 100 agencies and organizations to address the disease and conserve North American bat species. By year's end, state and federal agencies will have spent more than $24.5 million on the investigation, but so far a solution eludes us.
hewhocaves wrote:I threw a comment on there:
As mentioned by other commentatiors, there is no peer reviwed evidence that conclusively shows either that the primary vector of WNS is human to bat or that humans initially brought WNS to North America. it is more likely that bats were accidentally transported via overnight delivery from europe (trapped on contianer ships or planes). Recent advances in the speed of deliveries combined with increasingly lax federal checkpoints in the wake of 9/11 allowed WNS (along with many other invasive species) to gain a foothold in this country. In the years following 9/11 the DoA lost control over the monitoring of incoming shipments to the Department of Homeland Security. This accounts for the timing of WNS. It does not follow logically that humans are the vector because human movement between continents via air travel has remained constant since the 1960s.
link to article explaining how the DoA lost control of monitoring incoming pathogens in the years following 9/11
http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/ap-im ... lang=en-us
Link to article showing other ways bats have been documented to enter the country
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/9/1/02 ... rticle.htm
John
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