Latest WNS Map

[wyandottecaver]

Actually I did mean movies. The "noble" scientist doing science just for the sake of science. Sounds pretty...not generally true.

[Adventurer]

Nova Scotia,Canada has so few cavers,maybe 15 of us,over an area 600 miles long and 150 wide..Yet WNS has spread like wildfire in areas we had never visited-just the"experts".Blaming cavers is just a way of providing a scapegoat and a way to increase funding for chemical companies to make more money.

[BrianC]

Your regularly scheduled programming will return in about twenty years or so, or not!

[PYoungbaer]

Here's this week's updated map. It has the changed status for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, adds Acadia National Park's county in Maine (no known hibernacula there, by the way, so bats flying outside may lead to a previously unknown roost), and five new Indiana counties and two in Pennsylvania:


Click image to enlarge

[dfcaver]

Interesting that Cambria County, PA is the only "confirmed" county of 2011-12 in Pennsylvania. I can find no news story or press release from any agency announcing this finding. Most known as the site of the Johnstown Flood, Cambria County has basically no caves, but is honeycombed by coal mines. So, my assumption is this finding is probably the Pennsylvania Game Commission monitoring an abandoned coal mine. Oddly though, the only bat related news out of Cambria County is bat deaths from the windmill turbines. Nothing about WNS in the media.

Does anyone have a link about this "confirmed" status???

[tncaver]

Eventually the map maker will run out of colors in 10 or 20 years. If humans were spreading WNS, the whole map would have been covered in just a couple
of years requiring only a couple of colors. USFWS....bah humbug.

[JSDunham]

Here's this week's updated map. It has the changed status for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, adds Acadia National Park's county in Maine (no known hibernacula there, by the way, so bats flying outside may lead to a previously unknown roost), and five new Indiana counties and two in Pennsylvania:

Peter, do you know if anyone has checked Day Mtn Cave or the Precipice Talus Caves for bats? Of the Acadia caves, those are the only ones I could imagine harboring bats, and Day Mtn isn't very big. The Precipice Talus has some dark rooms, though, and might support a small colony.

[Phil Winkler]

WNS found in old Fort Delaware bats in the middle of the Delaware River.
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120330/NEWS08/203300338/Disease-spotted-bats-forts?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Home|s&nclick_check=1

[PYoungbaer]

John,

Acadia has no known bat hibernacula - and none are known anywhere near there. The geology doesn't support cave formation, other than some talus, and of course, the sea caves. Day Mountain Cave is an uplifted sea cave.

Park and state officials were surprised by these day-flying bats, as were local residents, both inside and outside the park. The only known hibernacula in Maine are the Allagash Ice Cave - with a previously known population numbering in the 20s, and a couple of regularly monitored mines in Oxford County, near the New Hampshire border. I've been in touch with the Maine folks since the beginning of WNS, and those mines were clean until 2011, when they tested positive for WNS. Flying to the coast would be a stretch, particularly early in the emergence season.

There is a dissolution cave, Blueberry Cave, not too far inland, but it's not known to harbor bats. It's small size (200') and resident porcupine population make it unlikely anyway. It is, however, one of two sites in Maine with a very cool and unique luminescent moss that is worth a visit.

With the Delaware confirmation of WNS inside a fort, perhaps Maine should be checking places like lighthouse basements or abandoned military bunkers.

dfcaver,

Pennsylvania's western region is being saturated with WNS, not unexpectedly. I know they have sent some additional samples off for confirmation, but am also told they are unlikely to keep sending from every area,particularly if it's surrounded with confirmed, as a necropsy (animal autopsy) is expensive. There may also be a delay in reporting as the labs are backlogged and prioritizing new states and new areas over previously known or saturated areas.

[PYoungbaer]

Here's the press release from Delaware: http://www.dnrec.delaware.gov/News/Pages/White-Nose-Syndrome-detected-in-Delaware-bats.aspx

Latest map below.

Delaware: New Castle County Confirmed (previously suspect) on Northern Long-eared and Little Browns;
Indiana: Jefferson County Confirmed - Brough's Tunnel (Tunnel Cave) in the one suspect Little Brown out of @200
Tennessee: Van Buren County Confirmed (previously suspect)


Click on image to enlarge

[Pippin]

What's the deal with Van Buren county? I haven't heard anything about that.

[PYoungbaer]

Van Buren has been listed as suspect for two years, and shown as such on the WNS map. The source is Camps Gulf Cave. See the 2011 WNS Monitoring and Bat Population Survey of Hibernacula in Tennessee, May 2011:

http://www.tnbwg.org/2011%20Tennessee%20Hibernaculum%20Survey%20Report_FINAL.pdf

[JSDunham]

John,
Acadia has no known bat hibernacula - and none are known anywhere near there. The geology doesn't support cave formation, other than some talus, and of course, the sea caves. Day Mountain Cave is an uplifted sea cave.

I know, I've done quite a bit of exploration there. I thought of Day Mtn because though it is a sea cave, it is about fifty feet into the cliff with a narrow opening and a chimney in the back; I've seen bats hibernating in solution caves of similar dimensions. Certainly no large colony, though.

I wonder about bats in deep talus, though. After the reports of so many flying around on Mt Washington (which certainly has nothing but talus) I started wondering how deep into talus you would have to go to get warm enough temps for hibernation. The bats can go all the way to the bottom, and if there happens to be a large room down there... certainly someplace like the Precipice talus, where you have a sort of "valley" filled with boulders, there must be some deep places. Have there ever been records of bats hibernating in talus or talus caves?

[PYoungbaer]

John,

There is plenty of evidence of bats hibernating in talus and even simply rock crevices. Most of those instances are not in the Northeast, however, as the winters are too cold, but it's common in other parts of the country. However, the Allagash Ice Cave, in the far north Maine woods, is deep enough to get away from the ups and downs of outside weather, and it is known to have hibernating bats.

[Pippin]

Peter, I know that Van Buren county's been "suspect" for a few years. I mean what happened to change it to "confirmed?" I always assumed that a county can't be confirmed until a lab actually examines a bat and says it has WNS. I haven't heard about any new cases of WNS in Van Buren county, I haven't seen any press releases about anyone finding any new cases in Camps' Gulf. So why is it now confirmed?