Batpocalypse

Scientists are concerned a biodiversity crisis among bat species is happening:

According to the [Fish and Wildlife Service] agency, 5.7 million to 6.7 million bats have died from the fungal ailment in eastern North America since an epidemic [of white-nose syndrome] first broke out in upstate New York in 2006.

Does this matter? Why yes, it does:

[bats] are a hugely diverse group of mammals, and each species has a very special ecological niche that can’t be filled by a different bat species.”

“Different species eat different things, hunt in different locations and fit into the ecological puzzle in a unique way,” she said. “Losing one bat species would be huge — losing 20 would be catastrophic.”

The problem in the Northeastern US is that bats are dying for the wrong reason – a fungal infection. If the cause of death was wind farms, it’d be fine. They could probably even get a permit.

The USGS noticed the bat problem in 2009. Below is an audio interview with Dr. Paul Cryan, a bat specialist at the Fort Collins Science Center. It’s worth a listen, every wind turbine kills bats. Even the few that don’t shred birds, still get bats:

 In Spain, the bat death crisis is entirely man-made, in the name of saving the planet:

On 12 January 2012, at the First Scientific Congress on Wind Energy and Wildlife Conservation in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, the Spanish Society of Ornithology (SEO/Birdlife) made public its estimate that, yearly, Spain’s 18,000 wind turbines may be killing 6 to 18 million birds and bats (1).

[Mark Duchamp, president of Save the Eagles International] has always maintained that earlier studies, made when bird mortality at windfarms wasn’t such a hot potato, were more credible than recent ones. “It is a curious business where those consultants who find or predict the lowest mortality land all the contracts. This is what is being asked of them, and this is what they do.

All the Fish & Wildlife Service has to do is get better consultants, and their bat problem will disappear. As will the bats.