North American Bats in Trouble, due to White Nose Syndrome

Did you know that species are dying off all over the place?
This latest development has resulted in a dangerous situation for North America's bats. We're in the pre-crisis stage right now, but it could easily advance to a serious crisis for the bats of North America. Scientists are taking drastic measures right now to avert the potential crisis. The bats are dying because of something called White Nose Syndrome.



The white stuff all over its skin is a fungus. The fungus might not even be the actual killer, but just taking advantage of weakened bats. They actually don't know. It seems though that the fungus is definitely what's causing the problems. White Nose Syndrome itself is not yet very well understood.
The evidence suggests that this fungus somehow came over to North America from Europe. There, these problems aren't happening because apparently similar fungi exist but the bats have developed immunities, unlike North American Bats.
Bats hibernate in the wintertime, but they need to wake up occaisionally to drink water. The White Nose Syndrome, once it has infected the bat, will make it wake up too often, and so the bats will starve to death. White Nose Syndrome is killing off whole caves of bats, and has killed over a million of them to date.
Invasive species are just one of the things happening in the world today that is fucking up the environment (and has been for a long time; the ultimate invasive species back in the day was humans). That, and climate change, is making conditions on the planet ripe for massive net biodiversity loss.
Have you noticed that species are dying off all around us? We are losing species to extinction at an astonishing rate, and it's humans who are causing it. Loss of biodiversity is one of the hugest environmental issues we face (or will ever face). Humans have been extinguishing entire species ever since we evolved. The thing is though, we now know that the more diverse an ecosystem is, the healthier it is. Biodiversity is what makes life on the planet work. Without ecosystems, we would be unable to survive. Biodiversity gives us food, clean water, oxygen, a stable climate, clothing, shelter, and medicine.
Therefore, every species we have, we need. Bats are very important, and for us they are especially essential for pollination and insect control.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3R708CNPxg