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Thats excellent news so far. Thank you for getting involved on this forum and letting us know what you know.

So it appears we have no spread that has to be anomalous. I'm still interested in those big western PA colonies that are healthy.

John Chenger wrote:There will be more info posted here when I get it:

http://www.batmanagement.com/cgi-bin/ya ... 1236828223

We can stop wondering when WNS makes it's appearance in the midwest. Also I'll point out that I have personally been to several large bat sites in western PA this winter and those are most certainly doing just fine. If WV and VA wasn't convincing enough for somebody, the jump to IN most certainly seems to indicate it hitched a ride on some dusty coveralls.

Please note I am not blaming any group or individual, just pointing out the containment idea is proving to be dead in the water long before anyone knew what to try and contain.

Seems like like me somebody was ready to sell cavers down the road here, glad it turned out the way it did.

Im not entirely certain Indiana would be anomalous. If there's a year's lag before symtoms show and if Indiana bats have a range of at least 400km, then there is certainly enough time for it to go from NY to Indiana. Furthermore, we do not know specifically which caves have been checked for WNS or if anything past the routine checks were done.

From this morning's Greencastle Indiana paper:

Monday, March 16, 2009
By MARIBETH WARD, Staff Writer

With the migration of bats quickly approaching, there is good news for Indiana and it's bat population. According to John Whitaker, Jr. with the Center for North American Bat Research and Conservation at Indiana State University, there is no evidence of a mysterious disorder, called white-nose syndrome (WNS) that appears to be associated with the death of hundreds of bats in the northeastern United States.


Peter Youngbaer
NSS 16161
WNS Liaison

From a biological perspective Indiana would be VERY anomolous. Either a NE bat did something never before shown (i.e. migrated between these two very distinct population areas) or something else did. Indiana bats *can* migrate 400km in *some* cases in *some* places. The east west distances are usually very much less than even the normal north south ranges. The average migration for a given region can vary widely. We also don't know if the lag in WNS is 30 hours or 30 years.

Yes a bat might make that trip. But the probability seems very very small. We do in fact know which caves have been checked for WNS and many cavers are alerting officials to ones that werent, but where suspicious events have occured. As to selling cavers down the road....I think John was simply stating a logical conclusion. If that report had been WNS, then I doubt anyone familiar with Bat ecology would be defending a bat-bat mechanisim very strongly for that case.

Sorry, how many Indiana bat migrations have been charted over the past fifty years? Five? Ten? Twenty? in total. That's the kind of numbers that the literature seem to be pointing towards. That's an amazingly small sample to draw conclusions from. And that doesn't answer the other two questions - whether bat colonies outside the affected area have been placed under the same scrutiny as bat areas within the affected area and whether there's a one-year or a two year gestation period.

Now WNS showing up in Texas this fall.. that would be anomalous.