Another WNS article from missouri......stating.......

[Chads93GT]

http://www.ruralmissouri.coop/digitalrm/story4.php

stating that we can carry spores and introduce the disease to new caves.

[SuckinOnSodaStraws]

I really wonder how this will be resolved. I figure it won't be long until serious cavers have had enough with the closures. Respect and understanding aside, it is no small matter closing off an entire frontier of exploration to hundreds of thousands of people... There are access managers for a few caves under the region 2 closures, but overall the pace of finding new cave data is being staggered drastically. I also wonder how hard the efforts are being made to find a resolve and not just slap another extension on the closures again. This all started about the time my group was getting really involved with caving. It's been a brutal kick in the jewels for us... And for anyone currently discovering a love for the underground. Cave bologna...

[Jeff Bartlett]

Geez, that's rough. More and more, I feel like I escaped the Ozarks just in time. :(

[BrianC]

$961 million dollars worth of insect control from bats alone in the state of Missouri is probably the biggest bunch of BULL that I have read yet. Most areas that have bats are not close enough to agricultural areas to make any dent at all from insect control. I would like to have articles publishers site reasoning for making such bold statements. Just another "The Sky is Falling" statement, gathering support from John Q. Public.

Similar statements have been made about the North East Us, where as not one single additional penny has been used in pesticides after the decimation of bats in that area. Where do we go from here? I'm going back to sleep, wake me up when it's over.

[JD]

Dr. William Elliott is so full of shit on this.

[DeanWiseman]

The thing that's bugging me just a little bit is that there is data to indicate even "sensitive" bats (i.e. Indiana bats, Myotis sodalis) can do just fine, and even grow in population in caves which are frequented by people. I was just in a cave last weekend that sees hundreds, if not thousands of people per year... year round... and we counted WELL over 1,000 bats (big browns and eastern pips, mostly). Tons and tons of them.

I've been visiting that specific cave for 30 years, and have never seen so many as this year. Maybe the problem isn't the human visitation, but the conduct of the humans who visit?


Just a thought.


-Dean

[wyandottecaver]

Indiana bats in Wyandotte cave rose from less than 3000 to nearly 30,000 all while commercial tours with fixed lighting passed directly beneath them year round. A thermal imaging study could find no statistically valid correlation to bats arousing from slumber and tours. There was a correlation to their natural 7-10 day arousal cycle.

Now, those bats were obviously acclimated to a certain level of disturbance, and hibernacula can be disturbed by visitation...Gray bats in particular are simply intolerant of disturbance in general. But bats DO arouse even in the absence of any people, and for most caves and species reasonable and responsible visitation poses a threat only to those individuals on the edge of surviving the winter anyway.