Skip to main content
Federal officials are worried about Oregon's wildlife. Specifically, our bats.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has awarded $38,800 to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to combat white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has ravaged bat populations throughout the US.
"Where [the disease] has been established, the focus is on increasing survival of bats," Wendi Weber, Northeast Regional Director for the Service and co-chair of the WNS Executive Committee, is quoted in a press release. "On the leading edge of the disease front, it's also on limiting the spread, and where the disease has not been discovered, it's on preventing the arrival of WNS."
White-nose syndrome, named for a white fungus that appears on the noses of affected bats, has wreaked havoc on bat populations throughout the US and Canada since the first reported cases in 2007.
The disease, which can wipe out entire colonies, is thought to have killed more than six million bats. Its rapid spread and high death toll is causing panic for wildlife biologists.
"You don't want to be losing millions and millions of bats," says Colin Gillin, a veterinarian with Oregon Fish and Wildlife who wrote the federal grant application.
Bats are crucial to the health of ecosystems, Gillin says, as well as being a boon for agriculture. "Bats in particular are great predators of insects," he tells WW. "They reduce the cost of applying pesticides."
Oregon is among 34 states to receive grants aimed at slowing the disease's spread. The money will to go testing for the illness and to a lab biologist position.
Fish and Wildlife departments in the Northwest have been on high alert since March, when a bat with the disease was discovered near Seattle, in the first reported case west of the Rocky Mountains.
So far, no cases have been reported in Oregon. But Gillin thinks it's likely that the disease will reach us soon.
"Maybe it just sits up there east of Seattle and simmers," Gillin says. "[But] these bats tend to mix. Some of them are migratory."
If that happens, he says, ODFW is going to need a bigger grant.
"You'll spend ten times the money to manage it once it's here," he says.
Willamette Week