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There's trouble in the bat cave By Dan Ashe The Sacramento Bee It's October, which means that bats are once again having their annual star turn, popping up on classroom bulletin boards and store windows across America. But this year, actual living bats in North America aren't so abundant. They are being decimated by a deadly health epidemic. The disease causing this die-off is called white-nose syndrome, and it is infecting hibernating bat populations across the Eastern states. In the four years since it was first detected, white-nose syndrome has spread quickly from a cave in upstate New York, the epicenter, to 16 states and four Canadian provinces. It has killed more than 1 million bats. Biologists in New York first started to notice dead and dying bats with unusual symptoms in 2007. Named for a fuzzy white fungus that often grows on the muzzles, wings and tail membranes of infected bats, white-nose syndrome had never been seen in North America. As winter wore on, more an...

Updated 1/28/10 -------------------------------------------------------- National park battling infestation of hogs The Associated Press KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- National park biologists are trying to come to grips with a hog infestation in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In 2009, the park's hog team removed 620 wild hogs, the third highest since the hog control program started in the late 1950s. Biologists say the hog population spiked last year because of a bountiful mast crop that enabled the sows to produce more than one litter. Park biologist Bill Stiver told the Knoxville News-Sentinel the introduction of wild, semi-domesticated hogs into the park has made hog control even more difficult. "The speculation is that hunters are illegally releasing feral pigs that eventually make their way inside the park," Stiver said. "It's a major problem not just here, but all over North America." He said numerous hogs killed this year had spotted markings and curl...

Merry Christmas! -------------------------------------------------------- Special Report: The Exotic Menace (Florida) News-JournalOnline.com Link -------------------------------------------------------- Bat Deaths: Some Species At Risk Of Becoming Endangered By RINKER BUCK The Hartford Courant December 21, 2009 The die-off of bats in Connecticut and other Northeastern states is now so severe that federal wildlife officials consider it "the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife caused by infectious disease in recorded history." Since 2006, when hibernating bats in a cave west of Albany were found coated with a chalky fungus, the so-called white-nose syndrome has hopscotched from New Hampshire to West Virginia, sometimes decimating entire caves in a single winter. Finding a remedy for the condition before the die-off reaches the huge bat habitats of Tennessee and Kentucky is considered vital because individual bats eat thousands of insects a night, providing a cri...