Horror, Sleaze and Trash.

 

All but 23 of 10,000 bats in Durham bat mine have died

Bucks County’s largest bat population has met a grim fate. Scientists have confirmed that nearly all of the 10,000 bats that have hibernated in an abandoned iron ore mine in Upper Bucks for generations have died. When Pennsylvania Game Commission Biologist Greg Turner recently visited the Durham mine for the first time in two years, he found total devastation. The Durham bat mine was once the second largest known bat habitat in Pennsylvania, but this winter only 23 were found alive. Of those, half had clear signs of infection.
Bucks County’s bats were wiped out by a disease that has been killing bat colonies across the Northeast at an alarming rate in the past four years. White nose syndrome causes a white fungus to form around the nose of infected bats. They lose the body fat needed to survive hibernation and ultimately the mammals starve to death during the winter months. During his visit to Durham’s mine on Feb. 21, Turner found three different species of cave bats. Eighteen of the 23 bats were little brown bats. Of those, half of them were crowding at the entrance to the cave or had fungus on their muzzles; both are tell-tale signs of the fatal infection….
In Pennsylvania, 98 percent of cave-hibernating bats have died, said Turner.