OUTDOORS: White nose syndrome affecting state bats

This past spring, the game department announced that it had found white nose syndrome in bats at two different caves in western and southwestern Virginia.

The news was alarming on many fronts, not least of which is that so little is known for certain about the condition - how it is contracted, how it operates, how it kills.

What is obvious are its outward signs: Infected bats exhibit a white fungal growth around their noses as well as on their wings, legs or tail membranes.

WNS was first discovered in a cave in upstate New York in February 2006. It has since been found in caves and mines in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. In all those places, hundreds and then thousands of bats turned up dead in and at the entrance to caves.

Scientists theorize that the fungus causes an irritation that wakes up bats that normally hibernate through the winter. These bats then fly around at a time when no insects are available and it's too cold for them to survive. Studies of dead bats show a depletion of the body fat they need to get through hibernation.

Very few bats were found dead in or around Virginia caves last winter, but the disease is following the pattern it did in the northeast - slowly spreading to more sites, while greatly increasing its mortality rate over time. Some of those caves in New York where the syndrome was first discovered now have near 100 percent bat mortality rates and estimates of the death toll up north range as high as 400,000 bats from a variety of cave species.

I caught up with Rick Reynolds, one of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries biologists researching WNS, recently to get an update on the disease and the work he and others are doing to try to understand it. He said since the spring, when it was found in Breathing Cave in Bath County and Clover Hollow Cave in Giles County, WNS has spread to three more Virginia caves: Hancock Cave in Smyth County, Newberry-Bane in Bland and Endless Caverns, a commercial cave in Rockingham.

Reynolds and his colleagues spent recent weeks working on two projects. The first is a study of gray bats, an endangered species whose range extends dangerously close to the most southern known extent of WNS in Smyth County. The second is a study of bats returning to caves for fall mating and winter hibernation. The focus is on caves where WNS is known to be present and whether bats show any symptoms of WNS when they enter.

"We're looking to see if the bats that survive through the winter and leave the cave and forage and feed through the summer, if the white nose effects them during that time of year," he said. "We're expecting them, when they come back from the summer, to be in good condition."

Why does all this matter? Reynolds and his counterparts in state and federal agencies up and down the East Coast are racing to figure out what's causing WNS because bats play such a huge, if largely unheralded role, in so many ecosystems.

"They do eat what we consider pests, especially with agriculture," Reynolds told me back in April. " If you lose that natural insecticide, then agriculture is going to have to make up for it somewhere else, and that probably means using more chemicals. Then not only do you have the chemical in the environment, but you have to understand the cost to agribusiness."

This winter will be key, Reynolds said, in determining how bad our WNS problem is and if it's getting worse.

. . .

As luck would have it, Reynolds also is also responsible for handling reports of cougar sightings, and I had one to report when I spoke with him the other day. Actually, I didn't see the cougar (mountain lion, puma, catamount, panther, etc.); a friend did, but this is a guy that's been hunting all his life. He knows his way around the woods and has seen all there is to see - at least now he has.

It was in Fluvanna County two weeks ago. This friend, who will remain nameless, was bow hunting for deer from a tree stand, when he saw what he swears was a cougar emerge from the woods and stop in a clearing.

Reynolds said many of the reports they get are from people who saw something briefly, out of the corner of their eye or through an obstructed view. This wasn't the case with my friend. The mountain lion paused over a downed log before moving on out of view. It did not leave any tracks, he said, because the area was covered in leaf litter.

Reynolds said that while there have been no confirmed cougars in Virginia since the 1880s, he receives about two reports of sightings a month. Some of those are investigated and found to be bogus, like the guy who called in a report of a cougar on the side of Interstate 64 near Afton Mountain. The responding biologist identified the animal as a golden retriever.

Reynolds said that while it's possible some of the sightings are legitimate, "my guess is when we do find one, there's a strong likelihood that it's been a released animal.

"There's always the possibility of a cougar showing up," he added. "You look at the illegal pet trade industry. You can buy a cougar if you want to."

I don't doubt my friend's eyes. The question is whether he saw a released former pet or a cougar far outside its natural range.

If any of you out there see a cougar or have seen one in Virginia, I'd love to hear about it. Just send an e-mail to the address below.

Contact Andy Thompson at