Peter-
Thanks so much for the context of the assumed "ground zero"- makes for a pretty Rube Goldbergian human-bat infection path. Not that anyone knows who Rube Goldberg was.
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PYoungbaer wrote:Luke,
I'm pretty sure the ventilation system does exactly the opposite of what you describe. It was installed following a tragic accident where blasting dust from the quarry was sucked far into the cave and caused two tour guides who were doing their daily morning check before opening to be overcome and die. The fans were part of several managerial and regulatory responses to help prevent anything similar from happening again.
shibumi wrote:What has constantly amazed me is the consistent lack of recognition by officials that bats hitch rides on all sorts of modern transport systems as the Occam's Razor explanation of the most likely way it jumped from Europe to North America.
Buckner Cave in Indiana only this year saw bats with WNS symptoms, a year after it was discovered in nearby caves with large hibernating colonies, yet in 2007 cavers were known to have gone from caves in Virginia that had confirmed WNS later that winter, to Buckner within a week of having been in those caves in Virginia. And Buckner is a very high traffic cave and has been for many decades. The irony there is that the first caves in Indiana to have WNS confirmed (even though it was being actively looked for in numerous locations around the state) were in caves the IDNR had closed for several years, and some caves that have bat populations yet have remained well traveled still have not had it found (and it's been looked for).
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