"There is good news from Vermont this Christmas for the little brown bat, a threatened species that’s hanging on to existence 'by a tiny little fingernail,' said a state conservationist who’s watched them die by the millions in the Northeast from a mysterious disease."
"Scientists who visited more than a dozen sites where the bats nest in the western part of the state found thriving colonies that appear to be resistant to white-nose syndrome, a disease caused by an aggressive fungus.
Pennsylvania biologists are also monitoring about 2,000 bats that appear to be healthy in an abandoned coal mine in Luzerne County in the state’s northeast, the Associated Press reported. The little brown bat seemed hardest hit in that state, where reports said the population dropped by more than 90 percent.
'It’s just a ray of hope that there are bats that have survived over three years of white-nose syndrome, and we want to know how they survived, or if they will continue to survive, and if this is enough bats to . . . recover a population,' said Scott Darling, a biologist for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department."
Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post December 21. 2011.
