Nice article in the Berkshire Eagle

[cavergirl]

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_145268 ... st_emailed

This is a good interview with a local caver

"He stopped by The Eagle last Tuesday to talk about Berkshire caves, exploration and the lives of bats."

" In the last few years, Telladira has become aware of and much concerned about the die-off of vast numbers of bats from so-called white-nose syndrome."

"To make clearer the issues surrounding the bat die-off, Telladira and the BerkshireCounty Cavers have organized a program, "Bat Buzz," at the Berkshire Museum next Saturday that will bring in biology experts to discuss the situation and photographs to illustrate it."

" There's been a lot of talk about cavers causing problems [by spreading the disease to bats]. In fact, it's quite the opposite. They wouldn't even know about this stuff if it weren't for the cavers."

Here's someone who has gone out on his own trying to educate folks and do something constructive, rather than sitting up all night on the computer and

and, an interesting note, this caver claims to have seen bat die offs in Massachusetts in 2005, approx 2 yrs before dead bats started showing up in NY

In 2005 was when we first noticed it. When we first discovered Merlin's Cave, we noticed we had quite a few bats in there. We had not been in there in about a month and when we came back there was a lot of dead bats.
At the time we didn't know what killed them. That was my first experience with dying bats.

Maybe Howe's cave wasn't the epicenter at all.

[Evan G]

Maybe Howe's cave wasn't the epicenter at all.

I've doubted it all along because the original report had a lot of assumption & speculation interwoven into it. Just because it was seen there first doesn't equate to original foothold hot zone.

[LukeM]

Can anyone speak to the validity of the statement that White Nose was in Merlin's as early as 2005? Peter? Did Mike mis-speak, or was this a typo? Is he just assuming any bat die off is due to WNS? If it's true I'm surprised I haven't heard this till now.

[PYoungbaer]

Mike misspoke. According to John Dunham's article in the Northeastern Caver:

"Then digging broke thru on 15 Oct 2006, into the horizontal maze section near the entrance. Into canyon 19 Feb 07"

[PYoungbaer]

Mike misspoke. According to John Dunham's article in the Northeastern Caver:

"Then digging broke thru on 15 Oct 2006, into the horizontal maze section near the entrance. Into canyon 19 Feb 07"

Bats are well down in the lower section of the cave, and were not seen before 2007.

[steven.millett]

Yes Peter is right,

Mike appolgizes for any confusion that he caused (he was nervous as it was his first interview). Anyway this event gathered over 170 people (the majority were non- cavers) and even some local cave owners. I hope that maybe other cavers in other parts of the area will use this as an example and try to get real facts about WNS, bats, and caving to the general public.

[JSDunham]

Yes, we didn't notice the die-off in Merlin's until mid-winter 2007. We didn't even enter the section of the cave containing bats until that February.