This April, a little March Sadness

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The images above are white nose species we have hosted at Save Lucy. Not all species are imperiled equally, but all of them, even the more common ones, are in need of conservation action. -- Ed.

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. Mine started off well because it was Easter. I like Easter! I got to eat a lot of candy and candy makes me happy. Sadly, my wonderful vacation and holiday had to come to an end. I went to school on Tuesday. I had to give a 10-minute speech in my English class on Wednesday. I also had exams. It was awful!

Something else happened this week that was even more awful than my suffering. The fungus that causes White Nose Syndrome has been found in two new places. First, it was found in Kansas. Kansas is the 32nd state that the fungus has been found in. Several bats were found to have the disease in Cherokee County in Southeast Kansas and in Barber County in South central Kansas. This news made me very sad.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the fungus has now been found in Central Texas. It was found in the Panhandle of Texas last year and it seems to be spreading. It has now been found in 4 new Texas counties. They found the fungus on cave bats, tri-colored bats, Townsend’s big-eared bats, and on a Mexican free-tailed bat. The detection of the fungus on a Mexican free-tailed bat was particularly worrisome. Scientists don’t think these bats are susceptible to WNS, but since they migrate in such large numbers, they are worried the disease could spread further.

If you would like to read more about this sad news, you can find information here and here.

The most recent map that shows where WNS has been detected.
The latest spread of sadness map. You can keep up to date on the spread and attempts to control it at whitenosesyndrome.org.

 

 

 

 

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