The Vermont-based Center for Biological Diversity informed Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar yesterday that they are suing the government on behalf of two bat species that have been decimated by a mysterious fungus. From the press release:
“Bat numbers are plummeting, bat biologists across the country have been urgently sounding the extinction alarm, and yet the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is silent,” said Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate at the Center.
The Interior Department missed an April deadline for responding to the endangered species petition and has given no indication of when and how it intends to answer the call for stronger protections for the two species. Both bat species were thought to be uncommon to rare prior to the appearance of white-nose syndrome in the northeast United States in 2006. Since then, the disease has spread into 14 states and two Canadian provinces, taking a harsh toll on the two species as well as seven others.
In Massachusetts, New York and Vermont, the states where the disease has been present for the longest, the eastern small-footed bat population has decreased by nearly 80 percent over the past two years, and the northern long-eared bat population has shrunk by 93 percent.
New York has been the epicenter of the bat catastrophe, as one of the places where White-nose Syndrome, a cold-tolerant fungus that kills hibernating bats by forcing them to wake up and starve to death, emerged. In May, a group of bat activists led by Bat Conservation International asked Congress for $5 million to study the fungus, which spread as far west as Oklahoma and as south as Virginia this year.
