Do Cavers spread White Nose Syndrome?

[caverdan]

The real problem lies in removing all these spores that are having sex with themselves.......off of our bodies and out of our hair.

Gosh Dan, if you really feel that way, simply don't go caving.

Luckily.....I'm out here where there is no WNS.....or I would quit.

So the spores in your hair can be collected and eaten with any cave cricket soup, or garnish among other fine cave cuisine.

But my girlfiends a vegan

Seriously....you's guy's and gal's need to come out to Colorado this Summer and enjoy a Caver's Slice of Heaven at the 2011 Convention and let the Madrat's hook ya up with some BEER AND CAVING !! How does tent to tent beer delivery sound to ya??? and all the caves you care to hike to....because Caves R 4 All!!!

[eyecave]

eyecave,

Long before there was WNS, it was good caving practice to avoid hibernating bats. It still is.

can you see my point though?.............sure you are right......but would a bats first exposure make his not being disturbed more important?......get real, this should take zero thought and you are trivializing it......

[eyecave]

Bacteria and fungi are ubiquitous. There is nothing you can do to prevent their spread and presence in nature. Nothing.

Ground water flows over the surface and into conduits to streams, rivers, caves, etc. Carrying heaven's knows what with it.

What a single person does is largely insignificant to nature.

As I've read what all are doing for decon I can think how silly it all seems when you consider the big picture.

Bats will survive in some manner. In the end the earth wins.

totally agree with you.......my suggestion that we control caving during hibernation periods is the only significant contribution we, as a group of cavers can make........and i have trouble getting cavers to see that point.......thank you phil......

[BrianC]

Bacteria and fungi are ubiquitous. There is nothing you can do to prevent their spread and presence in nature. Nothing.

Ground water flows over the surface and into conduits to streams, rivers, caves, etc. Carrying heaven's knows what with it.

What a single person does is largely insignificant to nature.

As I've read what all are doing for decon I can think how silly it all seems when you consider the big picture.

Bats will survive in some manner. In the end the earth wins.

totally agree with you.......my suggestion that we control caving during hibernation periods is the only significant contribution we, as a group of cavers can make........and i have trouble getting cavers to see that point.......thank you phil......

Well eyecave, at this point, we have convinced you to consider caving when bats are not hibernating. Give us a little more time, and we will convince you of the true facts. It is impossible to keep your eyes closed forever.

[self-deleted_user]

Bacteria and fungi are ubiquitous. There is nothing you can do to prevent their spread and presence in nature. Nothing.

Ground water flows over the surface and into conduits to streams, rivers, caves, etc. Carrying heaven's knows what with it.

What a single person does is largely insignificant to nature.

As I've read what all are doing for decon I can think how silly it all seems when you consider the big picture.

Bats will survive in some manner. In the end the earth wins.

totally agree with you.......my suggestion that we control caving during hibernation periods is the only significant contribution we, as a group of cavers can make........and i have trouble getting cavers to see that point.......thank you phil......

Which I'm pretty sure already weren't cavers being careful in bat caves during hibernation to not take many trips during that time? Actually a funny point is in the UK, there are laws protecting bats like crazy - purposefully disturbing a bat can land hefty fines and jail time (I think it's 2 yrs minimum but I could be remembering wrong, and it's something like $10,000 fine per bat disturbed) but they still cave in the winter - key word is purposefully and in GB for example, we chilled out and were talking right underneath a bat (forget which kind, not a species we have here is all I remember) and it didn't seem to care.

[wyandottecaver]

The "winter disturbance" issue is one of the greatest myths perpetuated by reasonable people.

We ran commercial tours under thousands of bats for years and the population INCREASED every year. The problem (just like WNS) is that people take 1 piece of data and then let it get up and walk around on its own. "A bat that arouses uses energy"....thus any disturbance = arousal and any arousal is bad because bats need to sleep uninterrupted till spring....WRONG.

If a group of bats are subjected to outright harassment...especially several times in a season...yes, that can have a negative effect on their winter survival. If a group of bats that are not used to normal levels of disturbance from a typical cave trip are suddenly exposed to several trips (a newly discovered cave) then yes, that can hurt too.

BUT.......bats will wake up every 7-14 days on their own. They also will become acclimitized to a "background" level of disturbance within reason. Some bats will perish normally because they were either crappy hunters, sick, or chose to mate with late arriving females rather than conserve energy in hibernation.

The bottom line is that in normal circumstances, a moderate number of caving trips using common sense, pose little real danger to colonies as a whole. The exception to this are Gray Bats which are spastic in the extreme and who are very vulnerable to any kind of disturbance.

[tncaver]

Some specific bats ARE more prone to be disturbed by human presence than others.

[wyandottecaver]

isn't that what I just said? Or are you saying certain individual bats are more sensitive? I would support that idea as well, but the extra-sensitive individual here and there isn't really an issue from a management perspective...or rather *shouldn't* be.

[tncaver]

isn't that what I just said? Or are you saying certain individual bats are more sensitive? I would support that idea as well, but the extra-sensitive individual here and there isn't really an issue from a management perspective...or rather *shouldn't* be.

yeah. I guess so. The grays are what I was referring to. I guess your post was so long to your final point, the point kind of got lost in the jumble.

[self-deleted_user]

Yeah, exactly, wynadotte. The laws in the UK are more for like...when a company tears down an abandoned building, home to like a hundred bats without caring (an example Les was telling me about that happened). If they want to do that, they have to relocate the bats, prove the bats are thriving in their relocated area, before they can tear it down. That sort of thing.

Although if some "caver" was purposefully disturbing bats I'm sure it'd apply to them too. But no real cavers I think would ever do that. Every bat I've ever seen thus far in hibernation hasn't cared one bit. And most bats not in hibernation yet haven't cared either. There were two in the cave up north back in early October that got ticked off (they weren't hibernating yet) but we had 2 large groups go through that tiny cave, and those two bats were at head level in narrow spots. The rest of the 72 bats we counted on that trip didn't care.

[eyecave]

What a single person does is largely insignificant to nature.

As I've read what all are doing for decon I can think how silly it all seems when you consider the big picture.

Bats will survive in some manner. In the end the earth wins.[/quote]

totally agree with you.......my suggestion that we control caving during hibernation periods is the only significant contribution we, as a group of cavers can make........and i have trouble getting cavers to see that point.......thank you phil......[/quote]

Well eyecave, at this point, we have convinced you to consider caving when bats are not hibernating. Give us a little more time, and we will convince you of the true facts. It is impossible to keep your eyes closed forever.

[/quote]

phil.....first thanks for mentioning caving and hibernate in the same sentence.......but what about the radical idea that cavers voluntarily stop all caving during hibernation months to protect sickened infected bats that may be genetically equipped to be able to survive during the first year or two of this impending biological disaster that is coming this way?....does phil have any suggestions to facilitate the survival of bats more significant than a total ban on any likelyhood of hibernating disturbance of the first year of a WNS infected bat when this oncoming problem is in that area of the country?...in other words would it not be a good idea for the nss and cavers to have already totally restrict all caving in the northeastern part of the country during the epidemic stage in those areas?.........

lets deal with that reality issue.........


sorry, i don't make the rules...i am aware of some of them.......

[eyecave]

The "winter disturbance" issue is one of the greatest myths perpetuated by reasonable people.

We ran commercial tours under thousands of bats for years and the population INCREASED every year. The problem (just like WNS) is that people take 1 piece of data and then let it get up and walk around on its own. "A bat that arouses uses energy"....thus any disturbance = arousal and any arousal is bad because bats need to sleep uninterrupted till spring....WRONG.

If a group of bats are subjected to outright harassment...especially several times in a season...yes, that can have a negative effect on their winter survival. If a group of bats that are not used to normal levels of disturbance from a typical cave trip are suddenly exposed to several trips (a newly discovered cave) then yes, that can hurt too.

BUT.......bats will wake up every 7-14 days on their own. They also will become acclimitized to a "background" level of disturbance within reason. Some bats will perish normally because they were either crappy hunters, sick, or chose to mate with late arriving females rather than conserve energy in hibernation.

The bottom line is that in normal circumstances, a moderate number of caving trips using common sense, pose little real danger to colonies as a whole. The exception to this are Gray Bats which are spastic in the extreme and who are very vulnerable to any kind of disturbance.

and we thank you sir for allowing most of us to completely dismiss any idea of restricting our caving or activities during caving if it involves disturbing one bat or a hundred.....conservationists applaud you sir..........

your mentioning the 7 to 14 day cyclic rise and fall in hibernating bats rhythms, that are much more dramatically influenced by a caver than waking up a little bit in total darkness.......its a classic use of fact to justify questionable actions or to rule out radical suggestions........ and those sick bats that die during hibernation, what if its one of the colony of 100 that had a gene that allowed it to survive WNS and your january weekend trip bouncing that 74 footer was the disturbance that ate up enough calories that tipped his survival to the NOT side........?...........

[Phil Winkler]

In the end what we humans do will have little or no effect.

The earth will win. Bats will survive or not as will we.

We all are only here temporarily.

[tncaver]

In the end what we humans do will have little or no effect.

The earth will win. Bats will survive or not as will we.

We all are only here temporarily.

I hope we are here permanently.

[wyandottecaver]

eyecave,

just cross posted in another thread. The short version is that we put thermal imaging cameras under about 10,000 indiana bats for a whole winter while we ran lighted tours of mostly chatty school kids under them about twice a week. Not only did we not find piles of dead bats from those disturbances, we could prove that as a whole, bat arousal (we could measure .5 deg body temp changes) was not even tied to tours at all.

People equate caving with disturbance and disturbance with reduced ultimate survival. I would challenge you that those are very shaky assumptions.