Discussion of destroying WNS populations

[wyandottecaver]

I feel strongly that this is an issue that deserves more serious discussion and consideration...and quickly. I also don't want to keep rehashing it in the main thread just because I feel strongly about it. Therefore I am reposting one of my posts from the main thread and am hoping to continue the discussion here.... If you have arguments for or against this position, present them. Preferably with real world examples or data, but if its just your gut feeling thats ok too. My goal is to put all the variables on the table, refine them through the fire of objective discussion, and if we dont reach a consensus at least maybe we can get a sense of what the sustainable arguments for each position are rather than hiding behind..."it's complicated".

I had a very lengthy post written responding to various comments by various posters, but felt this excerpt would be more appropriate for a forum format and still communicate my views on the matter. In summary, I think biology and history shows clearly what must be done. Anything else is simply play acting.

As for middle ground, thats political BS. Trying to find middle ground is what allowed Hitler to invade much of Europe. Its why the USFWS and the States have IMHO dropped the ball. We are dealing with a pathogen that doesn't negotiate. Period. It doesn't care what you think, and is totally unaffected by your world view or opinion on sport caving. It doesnt matter what your social preferences are. By the time you learn as much from research as you want to before acting decisively it will have likely killed everything susceptible to it. We know much more about WNS today than 3 years ago. So what. I know of no case where that knowledge has saved a population or colony.

History is very very clear that wildlife pathogens like this are stopped in just 2 ways. Let it kill every individual not resistant to it (so far this seems to be a quite low percentage and might be zero) Or Kill every individual that has been or even might have been exposed you can find so it cant spread.
Option 1 virtually wiped out American Elms and is currently doing the same to Ash despite lots of effort based on compromises and middle ground scenarios.
Option 2 has proven fairly effective with Mad Cow and Bird Flu. In those last 2 cases hundreds and even thousands of people were adversely affected by losing their livestock and livelihoods to mandatory slaughters...but the governments involved didn't care much when the people whos livestock was being pre-emptively killed suggested they find middle ground. Fortunately WNS is only killing bats not people, But to the bats, the differences between those epidemics and this one are moot.

The choices we face are hard, might not work, and are unpopular. IMHO we knew enough by the end of year 2 that we should have as much as possible shut down caving in NE states beyond looking for infected sites and started destroying infected colonies as fast as possible. We knew those bats were as good as dead and we knew they would kill others come spring. Now we're still asking people to please act responsible..pretty please... and are still just talking about destroying colonies even though it may already or very soon be too late anyway....If the spring emergence, or people get them to the karst of KY......or Texas.......

Am I defeatist? yes. I see very little indication in those who are responsible for making the decisions, of the will to do what must be done when it must be done. Don't ask me, read a little history of pathogenic outbreaks. We seem content to talk much, work much, think much, offend no one and save nothing as we become spectators to one of the largest mass die-offs in modern history

[dfcaver]

I keep thinking of the first couple of chapters of Stephen King's "The Stand".

In hindsight, this is an idea that may have been effective very early on. But so little was known early on. Before the first deaths where noticed, the infected bats had spread WNS probably further than can be imagined. I think the genie is out of the bottle now, has been for several years, and there's no way to get it back in. Culling the herd or flock works short term, but the reservoir of infection remains; avian or bird flu culling runs into the hundred of millions of poultry, and it continues to pop back up. Only smallpox has been eradicated as far as infectious disease, and that was possible only due to some very specific methods that smallpox could spread.

I fear our only possibilities lie with 1) the disease becoming less deadly as the epidemic ages; 2) hopefully a geographic limit to the spread and/or 3) a resistant remnant breeding population.

[driggs]

History is very very clear that wildlife pathogens like this are stopped in just 2 ways. Let it kill every individual not resistant to it (so far this seems to be a quite low percentage and might be zero) Or Kill every individual that has been or even might have been exposed you can find so it cant spread.
Option 1 virtually wiped out American Elms and is currently doing the same to Ash despite lots of effort based on compromises and middle ground scenarios.
Option 2 has proven fairly effective with Mad Cow and Bird Flu. In those last 2 cases hundreds and even thousands of people were adversely affected by losing their livestock and livelihoods to mandatory slaughters...but the governments involved didn't care much when the people whos livestock was being pre-emptively killed suggested they find middle ground. Fortunately WNS is only killing bats not people, But to the bats, the differences between those epidemics and this one are moot.

wyandottecaver, please pardon my asking, but you provide no real name or NSS number to identify yourself - just what exactly is your background or experience that qualifies you to make a statement like "history is very very clear", or that it is advisable to euthanize literally hundreds of thousands of animals to "solve" the WNS crisis? In other words, please let us know why we (those of us who are not experts in biology or wildlife management) should consider your opinion to be an informed one.

[ek]

wyandottecaver:

What percentage of infected or possibly-infected bats would we have to kill for this to work?

If it's a high percentage, then I think what you suggest is impractical (which is just a polite way to say impossible). There are bats in parts of caves that humans cannot enter. I don't just mean because of legal reasons--I mean, physically cannot enter. Sure, you could still kill them. Poison the air, and kill off many other organisms and also humans, perhaps even produce extinctions of other species and devastate ecosystems as a result. But if you're talking about killing infected and possibly-infected bats in a way that is worth considering...well, there will always be plenty you can't get to.

Remember, bats don't just hibernate in caves. They also hibernate in unstable breakdown and piles of undetonated explosive in mines. And in people's basements. Go far south enough (where we do have WNS now), and plenty hibernate in cracks in surface rock.

Before figuring out whether or not it is advisable to kill off all these bats, we should first figure out whether or not it is possible. You seem to be avoiding that question altogether.

Bats are not domesticated. They are not farm animals. They are often not on the surface, and (except those that use trees) usually not in the winter. We can't round up all the bats and kill them like we can with chickens and cattle on farms.

I'm not sure what the point is of your analogy to Nazi Germany. I'm not sure it's a bad analogy, but I am sure it's a false one. The Nazis were not defeated by uncompromising assault. As one of enormously many examples, a huge factor in defeating Germany was the British government intercepting German communications, cracking their codes, and decrypting their messages. To maintain this, the British even decided to withhold action in a number of cases, some devastating in terms of both strategic and human cost, to maintain their access to that information. That access to information ultimately made the difference between winning and losing the war. And yet it was secured by devoting enormous personnel, equipment, and money that could otherwise have gone into direct assaults. I think you are trying to make an analogy between early attempts to appease Hitler (i.e. attempts not to fight him at all) and what you believe to be ineffective approaches to stopping WNS. But even if you're right and they're ineffective approaches to stopping WNS, they are still approaches to stopping WNS. Appeasement was not an approach to stopping Hitler, it was an attempt to allow Hitler to win "acceptably."

On the issue of "it's complicated," you're right that we shouldn't hide behind those words. On the other hand, by way of analogies, it seems like the choice of what to do is less like the choices the US and Britain had as to whether or not to go into the war, and more like the choice Finland faced.

I don't think that your experience as a biologist (or lack thereof) has bearing on the validity of your arguments themselves. If you want people to listen to you more, you might want to disclose that, but having authority wouldn't make you right and not having it wouldn't make you wrong. However, I am interested in the question of your experience because I believe that your position is worth considering, and I wonder if you are in a position to articulate it to the scientific community, with an article written with great precision and fully developed arguments, bearing numerous citations to the biological events in history to which you refer, rather than (or in addition to) articulating it informally on Cavechat.

[ArCaver]

Where do you stop? The boundaries of the area affected? 100 miles out? 200? Will we destroy all of one species because they seem more affected and may carry the disease to other species making them more at risk? We don't even know if this is something already here that's mutated, something new to these bats or possibly an environmental change that's made them more susceptible to a pathogen they've always shrugged off in the past.

[Chads93GT]

It is my opinion, that nature should just take its course. You are never going to get all the bats euthanized that are carriers. Eventually they will die. Human's interfere in mother nature enough as it is.

[John Chenger]

Bats have been around for millions of years, fungus has been around for as long. Why did this problem erupt in a small NY valley, Howe's Cavern a commercial cave, specifically, as best as anyone can determine? Seems like some kind of human intervention already took place to kick this off.

The WNS fungus is everywhere now, it's just a matter of time before it develops into a visible problem. It's too late to bother exterminating bats, it will -NEVER- be controlled that way. There was a chance when it was in Albany, but that's all water under the bridge.

[Anonymous_Coward]

I am hearing from the biologists that WNS has a near 100% mortality rate. If that is the case, then what would be gained by extermination?

It seems the most devastating effect might be the extermination of any resistant individuals, which obviously would be counter-productive to any chance of species recovery.

Are we not seeing any resistance to the fungus in affected sites? What about unaffected sites near known sites? Doesn't this suggest resistance in some way?

[driggs]

I don't think that your experience as a biologist (or lack thereof) has bearing on the validity of your arguments themselves. If you want people to listen to you more, you might want to disclose that, but having authority wouldn't make you right and not having it wouldn't make you wrong.

A situation as complicated and as far-reaching as White-Nose Syndrome does not have a "right" or "wrong" solution. There will not be any "silver bullet" to completely eradicate it, contain it, or reverse it, and any steps taken by man will have complex interactions with the ecosystem, environment, and many species, some of those interactions will surely be unexpected ones.

To publicly make a strong assertion that, essentially, involves the complete genocide of all cave-dwelling bats in the Northeast (or farther) is just about the most extreme suggestion possible. To me, this argument seems completely laughable (especially with your Nazi reference - how about if we call this The Final Solution to the Bat Problem) when presented by CaveStud69, but something that I'd at least give a reasonable weight to if presented by a person with actual education, experience, and insight into the issues of mass wildlife management.

I'm sorry, but without some statement of authority, a suggestion like this along with angry talk about "political BS" standing in the way of your brilliant solution... it detracts from the strength of an already weak argument, in my humble opinion.

I look forward to hearing comments on this idea by those with the training to provide an informed opinion.

[kmstill]

Culling the herd or flock works short term, but the reservoir of infection remains; avian or bird flu culling runs into the hundred of millions of poultry, and it continues to pop back up. Only smallpox has been eradicated as far as infectious disease, and that was possible only due to some very specific methods that smallpox could spread.

Actually, rinderpeste has effictively, if not officially, joined smallpox on the world-wide eradicated diseases list :) . And plenty of other diseases have been eradicated on a national basis (e.g. classical swine fever, polio, new world screwworm, pseudorabies, etc....). But in these cases we had an armoury of information and tools at our disposal - knowledge concerning causitive agents, mechanisms of transmission and pathogenesis, identified reservoirs, real-time geograhpic distribution and reporting systems, diagnostic methodologies, vaccinations....etc. Also, these efforts were not easy, or quick - they took prolonged, consistant, and coordinated efforts on a national/international basis and consistently had to fight opposition and counter-actions; disease eradication is a major challenge and many theoretically eradicatable (or at least VERY controllable) diseases are still major problems (e.g. measles in the US human population, rabies in domestic animals). Perhaps more importantly, we didn't begin the sucessful efforts with a mass cull. Stamping out protocols are generally most effective for foreign (and usually catostrophic) diseases with a point source infection (e.g. HPAI, exotic newcastle disease, african swine fever...) in a very limited geograhpic area (widespread distribution and wildlife reservoirs being two of the reasons why we're seeing limited long-term sucess in Asia with bird flu culls)- it also relies on us being able to efficiently diagnosis the disease, preferably in more than just the clinical animals.

While I think most everyone would agree that WNS is a catastrophic situation, it is still a situation of more questions than answers and while regionally contained, it is still a relatively widespread distribution (well beyond one or two point source colonies). And yes, there are major ethics as well as logistical considerations when dealing with wild life species/reservoir populations and disease (consider the ongoing brucellosis/bison, tuberculosis/deer issues, and rabies control issues). Culling (both mass stamping out or local/herd based test and cull) has its place and can be effective long-term, but not without additional effective biosecurity measures. Access restrictions and equipment decon are not unreasonable first steps, but they're still just a shot in the dark without more information.

[shibumi]

I'm with Andy and several other posters. First, as Eliah said, you can't kill every individual. Until you know
the vector and the specifics of an infection, you have little hope to affect it beyond shots in the dark, which
is what wiping out entire colonies (which I doubt could be done anyway) would be. Second, if a disease kills
100% of the population it becomes self-limiting. That is basic biology. Very few pathogens have ever done
that. All you need is a few individuals to survive and breed and in a few tens to hundreds of generations
the organism/vector become less virulent.

Second, until you know what other aspects the disease is affecting in the ecosystem, or vice versa, ANY action
can be the right or wrong one. These things don't exist in by themselves. The example of the American Elm
is fatuous, the American Elm still exists in the woods, it just doesn't reach sexual maturity, and there is evidence
that it is slowly starting to develop defenses against its pathogen. The invocation of Hitler is getting pretty close
to Godwin's Law, and Quirke's Corollary.

The proposal strikes me as "we must do SOMETHING, even if it is the wrong thing."

[Anonymous_Coward]

I agree that this thread is in Godwin's Law territory and we should quit. However, seeing that a recent On Rope thread miraculously survived Miller's Law, perhaps we'll forge ahead cautiously.

Researching exotic pests that wiped out entire species, I came across this in the American Chestnut entry on Wikipedia that seems to warn us against "The Final Solution" of extermination. The last sentence is what I want you to notice:

"Once an important hardwood timber tree, the American Chestnut is highly susceptible to chestnut blight, caused by an Asian bark fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica, formerly Endothia parasitica) accidentally introduced into North America on imported Asiatic chestnut trees. The disease was first noticed on American Chestnut trees in the Bronx Zoo in 1904. While Chinese Chestnuts evolved with the blight and developed a strong resistance, the airborne bark fungus spread 50 miles a year and in a few decades girdled and killed up to three billion American Chestnut trees. It is thought that panic logging during the early years of the blight may have unwittingly destroyed trees which had resistance to this disease and thus aggravated the calamity"

[wyandottecaver]

Well first,

I agree with EK that having a degree or relevant work experiance doesn't mean your a better thinker or your solution is right...it just means you have a broader background from which to formulate an opinion. But since Driggs feels only educated people can have good ideas......

In my case I have a BS in Wildlife Science, an MS in Environmental Policy with a thesis on the Endangered Species Act. I have previously worked for the State of Indiana as the site manager for Wyandotte Caves, a major Indiana Bat Hibernaculum, and as the Caves Specialist for the Division of Forestry where I was heavilly involved in projects related to caves, bats both endangered and otherwise, sport caving, and land use. I have also worked as a Property manager for their State Parks system. Currently, I work on digital mapping projects with the Department of Commerce.

The essence of what I am proposing is the targeted killing of bats now that will be dead in 1-2 years anyway. The complex interactions of environment and ecosystem will not change except in timing. What this does is deny those bats that 1-2 years to infect others.

A 100% deadly pathogen is indeed self limiting. in this case the limiting factor might be no more bats of those species left to infect. Lactase intolerance among desert tribes who live on goat and camels milk was unheard of until modern times...if you couldn't digest milk you died quickly. Thus that disease was very self limiting in that population. American elms took many years to die, and their many offspring have had how many decades to develop *maybe* resistance? Bats don't have that much time. Panic logging may or may not have removed resistant American chestnuts. The fact that many more american chestnuts did escape that logging...and still succumbed....tends to make that possibility speculative, American Chestnuts even exist sporadically today...as stump sprouts of long dead main stems, those sprouts ALWAYS succumb once they get a few years old. Chinese chestnut, a seperate species was never much affected anyway.

I also want to clarify that I am talking only about destroying colonies confirmed or strongly suspected to be actually infected with WNS..not every bat colony in the region. The points about WNS being widespread and getting every bat are certainly valid, but I believe mitigated by factors I describe below. As is the point that it might not even work. These issues make the necessary effort greater but not impossible or impractical.

I strongly disagree with the notion that its too late to use lethal methods to affect WNS. The primary vector seems to be bats and thus reducing the numbers of primary vectors WILL make a difference...how much is the question and that does get worse the longer we delay. Since they will all (or mostly) die from WNS anyway why not try? The reason killing them now vs letting WNS kill them is better (IMHO) is that they (or many) wouldn't get a chance to leave those sites in spring and infect others before WNS finally kills them that summer or next winter.

These species arent domesticated, but the critical difference in our favor is that these species do become concentrated and essentially immobile every winter. While some bats hibernate outside caves, the vast majority of individuals of the species we see affected are almost exclusively cave hibernating bats. The small isolated groups hibernating elsewhere are at a much reduced chance of being infected in the first place. These species also have a fairly finite range of yearly travel especially given a window of maybe 2 summers or probably less.

I do believe we could locate and destroy a very good percentage of exposed bats. This includes using means like hardware cloth to prevent exit as much as possible in spring..no it wont be perfect. but that still might be enough. Some bats and even some sites will certainly escape detection. Maybe only a few or maybe a good number, but the fewer infected bats you have on the landscape in spring/summer the fewer chances of dispersed healthy populations being reached, especially ones on the fringes of the WNS areas annual range. After 1-2 years the bats infected now are likely dead whether we find them or not. As long as you can reduce /minimize the number of new infection sites and destroy those populations when found your job gets easier with time. *hopefully* the end result is that you drastically reduce the number of new infection sites to a manageable level and the current large infection pool dies out within 2 years. Right now any hope is worth a shot.

There is as yet no evidence I know of indicating any sort of resistance in these populations. Nearby uninfected sites in areas like NY seem to be characterized by very dry environments rather than any difference in the bats themselves.

While far less effective, eradication of infected groups could even be done at the state level. As long as a given state destroyed infected colonies within its borders, eventually the pool of infected bats elsewhere would be gone or very much reduced.

This would get your bat-bat transmission way way down. This gets your rate of spread way way down which gives you time for study. Using time for study now just gives you more dead bats and a ever diminishing chance of ultimate success.

Yes, I agree you might not get enough to stop the bat-bat spread. You might retard bat-bat travel only to find people did it anyway... You might kill tens of thousands of bats and it still get away from you. In this case all you have done is killed those bats 1-2 years sooner than WNS will anyway.

[George Dasher]

Option Two helped kill all the American Chestnuts during the Chestnut Blight.

"They're going to die anyway, so why not cut them all down?"

The trouble is, it is also kills the individuals who might be resistant to the virus, fungus, etc.

Italy didn't do like the U.S., and they still have chestnuts--because some individuals survived and reproduced.

Killing all the bats is like killing someone who is diagnosed with cancer.

"Oh wait, it was predicted you would live for another five years. So sad... and now I'll have to clean my gun."

[Bill Putnam]

I agree that this thread is in Godwin's Law territory and we should quit. However, seeing that a recent On Rope thread miraculously survived Miller's Law, perhaps we'll forge ahead cautiously.

Since you guys already brought it up, I wonder what kind of cows tail Hitler would use to exterminate bats - static,or dynamic?